Calling all social media managers: Whether you're running an established agency, freelancing, or just dipping your toes into the waters as a solopreneur, this guide is for you.
In 2025, few things are as valuable to your brand's outreach as social media management. From sharing thought leadership posts on LinkedIn to hopping on the latest TikTok trends with quirky videos, there's a lot to juggle when crafting content that speaks to your followers.
With the average person spending 37.5% more time on social media today than in 2014, there's never been a better time to get savvy about social media management.
Leave the guesswork behind with the ultimate 2025 guide for social media management. We'll cover how to find the best social media tools to fit your workflow, master the ins and outs of influencer marketing, and stay one step ahead of the trends.
What is social media management?
While social media management is an umbrella term that includes plenty of aspects, at its core, it refers to the ongoing process of nurturing and developing a brand's online presence. This includes:
Creating and deploying a social media content strategy
Planning and publishing content
Analyzing engagement metrics
Optimizing reach
If this sounds like a lot of plates to juggle, you're not wrong! Social media managers wear many hats in their day-to-day work and often manage social media accounts across separate platforms.
Thankfully, new AI tools help automate and streamline many of these processes. The best AI tools for marketers save you time and give you easy access to your data so you can focus on creative production and growth.
Why is social media management important?
So, we’ve covered what social media management is—now let’s talk about why it actually matters.
Social media is a powerful force, with over 5 billion regular users. It's also super accessible, with most platforms being free to join. This vast reach positions social media as an indispensable part of your brand's strategy.
Social media is cost-effective. Even if you're working with a tiny budget, you can create sticky, engaging content that reaches a massive audience for a fraction of the price of television or print advertising. This low barrier to entry means that social media management teams can create enormous ROI for brands, large and small.
According to Forbes, a whopping 90% of social media users follow at least one brand, and 76% have bought an item or service they first saw on a social media platform. Underestimating this market would be a big mistake.
The key to tapping into this enormous demographic is authenticity. Social media managers are indispensable to crafting this trustworthiness through consistent branding and genuine community building. A good social media management tool simplifies this process while ensuring your ability to elevate your content and make it stand out.
What are the key components of social media management?
If you're diving into social media management for the first time, figuring out what to prioritize can feel overwhelming. Where should you be placing your focus?
Map out your strategy
Any brand strategy needs to start with an audit so you can assess which social media marketing tools will help achieve your goals:
Who is your ideal audience?
What kind of content do they like to engage with?
Why is your brand a good fit for their needs?
After you've developed your plan, use a visualizing tool like Later's content calendar to lay everything out and ensure you're not replicating ideas or leaving out important information.
Nail your content
Now comes the fun part! Create a clear visual brand identity through a consistent color scheme, font family, and logos.
Depending on the brand's needs, you may generate content yourself, work with user-generated content (UGC), partner with influencers, or all of the above. If you haven't searched for UGC before, using a library of existing content like the one included in Later's content creation tools can take out the guesswork.
When you have the perfect photos and videos, there's one more step: the caption. Don't underestimate the power of captions! This is a great place to establish your brand tone, provide value, and emphasize a call to action (CTA). Writing a bunch of captions at once? Avoid writer's block by using a caption generator that can imitate different "voices" and ensure consistency without repetition.
Line up your schedule
Once your engaging, actionable content is ready, you need to post it. While it's possible to publish each post manually, this is a massive time sink. With Later's schedule & publish tool, you can bulk schedule videos, images, and carousels to all the major platforms in just a few clicks.
Keep an eye on your metrics
Engagement on social media is an inexact science. As you develop your strategy, you'll likely need to make minor tweaks and changes (or even large ones!). Actively engage with other content relevant to your niche, and, if appropriate, with other brands.
Devote time to responding to people who interact with your posts. Developing a reputation as a responsive brand is an easy shortcut to trust. The perception that "real people" are behind a brand is crucial with younger audiences, who resent feeling like they're being sold something.
Crunch the numbers
Finally, analytics and optimization
Which posts get the most engagement? Are people saving or sharing your content? Are you seeing a healthy rate of click-throughs? If not, what can you change?
Getting insight into your personal best time to post helps get more eyes on your content. Or, get some fresh hashtag suggestions instead of recycling the same few keywords on repeat.
These tools and more are available with Later, your all-in-one social media management tool. Start a free trial today to explore the possibilities.
What makes a great social media manager?
It's one thing to post on social media and call it a day. It's quite another to make that post reach your audience and bring value to their lives.
A great social media manager is versatile and adaptable, capable of taking a social media strategy from idea through creation, all the way to completion. They must be creative and analytical to create content and deploy it effectively.
A social media manager nurtures a brand's online presence and community, and a lot of trust goes along with that. They're expected to know all the ins and outs of how the Instagram algorithm works and the secret formula for Instagram success. They may be responsible for moderating community forums, organizing online community spaces, analyzing complex data, liaising with shareholders, running expensive campaigns, and even reputation or crisis control.
But most of all, great social media managers know what tools to use to track their content performance and optimize their posts.
Data is vital for social media management, and tools that help you analyze and visualize analytics don't just save time—they drive data-informed decisions. Later's tools are a powerful engine for optimizing your accounts, with easy-to-understand charts and graphs that make data easy to digest.
Visual analytics tools like this make sense of core metrics like follower count, impressions, website clicks, growth rate, and reach. It also provides key demographic information about gender, country, and age, which informs the tone and voice of your brand's content. The best social media managers also track cost metrics to optimize their return on investment (ROI). This can include cost-per-click and cost-per-thousand impressions.
Later's Instagram analytics can even rank your posts by their engagement rate so that you can see where your strengths lie.
How do you build a social media management workflow?
A social media management workflow is a set of repeatable steps that turn the process of delivering top-level content to brands into a well-oiled machine. A well-structured workflow lets you manage your online presence while adapting to changes and anticipating conflicts.
A workflow can be simple or very complex, depending on your needs.
At its most basic, a social media management workflow looks like:
Ideate
Create
Review
Approve
Post
Analyze
Iterate
In practice, that might translate to:
Content strategy development
Content creation
Collaboration
Scheduling and publishing
Analytics and optimization.
A good social media management platform should support you every step of the way, helping to keep you organized and stay on schedule. Later's social media management tools can act like your personal assistant from start to finish:
Content strategy development: Find your starting point with Later's social media strategy resources.
Content creation: Use tools like the caption generator and UGC library to create engaging, on-brand posts.
Collaboration: Never miss a beat with the content calendar, and make sure the aesthetics are on point with the
Scheduling and publishing: Take the pressure off with the AI-assisted scheduler
and its ability to auto-publish.
Analytics and optimization: See what's working with analytics, and perfect your best time to post.
Without a robust workflow, it's easy to get stuck spinning your wheels on the same basic tasks. Plan time to allow yourself to make savvy, strategic decisions without snap judgments, and watch how you scale!
Why use a social media management platform?
Videos on TikTok, photos on Instagram, text posts on LinkedIn—managing social accounts across platforms presents challenges.
How do you optimize your content for each algorithm? How do you stay consistent without duplicating the same content over and over? How can you engage with an audience spread across all these channels?
The answer is with a social media management platform.
Instagram is one of the biggest players in the social media landscape, and it can be one of the trickiest to stay on top of. It's not enough to post regularly—you also need to take advantage of Stories and Reels to encourage growth.
Aesthetics are king, so try using a visual planner to ensure your feed looks balanced and cohesive as your target audience scrolls through your posts.
TikTok
TikTok is the real powerhouse for video creators, with almost 2 billion active users as of 2025. Later's all-in-one TikTok scheduler lets you bulk upload, auto-publish, measure analytics, and moderate comments so you can focus on being a creative game-changer.
Facebook might not be as visible with the younger generations, but it still packs a punch with millennials and Gen X. It's an excellent platform for promotion, but there's stiff competition.
Cut through the noise with a Facebook post scheduler that also cross-posts to other platforms.
LinkedIn might seem like a dark horse, but don't underestimate this business-focused social media platform. Engagement and conversation are high, with much of the site's activity coming from public interactions on shared posts.
You can maximize your reach with a LinkedIn scheduler that handles text, images, and videos, with visual calendar options.
What are the top social media management tools?
So what platforms do it all, from auto-publishing to generating captions? Let's look at some of the top social media management tools.
Later
We hate to toot our own horn, but Later is a rockstar of a tool for social media managers large and small. Not only do we allow scheduling and publishing for all major social media platforms, we also provide a visual planner, easy-to-understand analytics, AI-powered post optimization, and our incredible link in bio tool that makes customizable landing pages to house all your links in one place.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a popular social media management platform that many people in the industry use. Their interface allows for post scheduling, calendar views, and in-depth analytics. That said, the plans tend to be a significant investment, so they may not be a great fit for smaller agencies or freelancers.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is another popular option, especially for enterprise brands, as they specialize in taking a brand through the full social media funnel. Their holistic approach is great for ensuring consistency in tone through planning and publishing, but they currently don't offer unlimited media storage or a UGC library.
Tailwind
Tailwind is unique in the social media management landscape because it also provides email marketing support, creating a two-in-one solution. This may be attractive for marketers wearing more than one hat, but at present, Tailwind only supports Instagram and Pinterest, so social media managers would need to find a separate solution for other platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
How to stay on top of social media trends
Social media moves faster every year, with microtrends now popping up and fading away within the span of a few weeks. Viral dance trends and audio-related crazes pass even more quickly, with windows of importance as short as a few days.
How are you supposed to keep up without spending hours scrolling every day?
Innovation is crucial in this environment, and listening to the needs of your audience helps keep your finger on the pulse. Instead of searching through hundreds of comments, try a tool like Later's social media listening, which gives you curated and actionable insights on the trends your audience interacts with.
At Later, we're obsessed with helping our community to shine in the social space, so we update our blogs on Instagram Reels trends and TikTok trends weekly. We also share tips and tricks on all our social media channels.
How to use socials to drive $$$
Let's say you've built a big social following—but the ultimate goal is to drive revenue, right? Here's how to make the connection between views and cash flow.
First, make sure your social posts clearly spell out what you offer. You don't want an audience that thinks your content is funny but knows nothing about your service or product. Include calls to action where appropriate, like encouraging people to visit your website or click the link in your bio.
By default, the link in bio capabilities in Instagram and TikTok are simplistic and not eye-catching. Stand out from the crowd by customizing your interface with Later's link in bio tool. Not only can you add multiple links from a single entry point, but you can also choose different aesthetics to match your branding and track every sale.
Another option worth exploring is influencer marketing. This means collaborating with highly visible and viral creators, ensuring your brand reaches new eyes through a trusted lens.
How to use influencer marketing & social media management?
Influencer marketing is compelling. According to the Digital Marketing Institute, 69% of consumers express trust influencers' recommendations. Most impressively, they found that marketing campaigns using influencers can expect to earn $5.78 for every $1 spent.
It's a myth that influencer marketing only means big brands working with multi-million-follower Instagram accounts. In reality, influencer marketing is strongest for small and medium-sized businesses. Microinfluencers with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers are often affordable to work with and offer high engagement with their audiences.
Social media management and influencer marketing go hand in hand—each amplifies the reach of the other. Influencers are an authentic hook to connect with your audience and vouch for your brand. Then, interested viewers click through to your curated brand presence, validating the influencer's recommendation.
Want to learn more about this powerful combination and how to use it to its full potential? Check out Later's social media management services.
Examples of successful social media management case studies
Let's look at two brands crushing it when it comes to social media growth: S'well and MeUndies.
S'well
S'well's beautiful, sleek water bottles have boomed on social media, thanks in no small part to the consistent visual branding across their feeds. S'well is a design-driven company that makes the visual Instagram planner from Later a match made in heaven. S'well saw a 48% increase in Instagram followers in 2017, partly thanks to Later's success crafting a carefully curated brand presence.
MeUndies
LA-based MeUndies has been on a mission to create the world's most comfortable underwear since 2011. Over the past three years, Later helped MeUndies' Instagram account explode in popularity, with an increase in followers of over 40% in just one year.
Later's platform is purpose-built to run campaigns that showcase a brand's identity and authentic voice. MeUndies maximized Instagram as a point-of-sale using the link in bio feature, driving traffic to their site with no middleman.
Getting started with social media management
There's no one right way to enter the world of social media management. Some people start with a traditional marketing background; others come through a love of sharing on social media.
Here's a quick-start checklist:
Build your knowledge base: Learn everything you can about the social media landscape, but don't forget that it's always evolving. Choose notable people in your niche, and keep an eye on their strategies.
Network with industry professionals: Join groups, attend events, and find potential collaborators.
Develop your portfolio: Post to your own profiles, take over a friend's page, or create posts for small businesses' profiles to
Reach out to brands: Look for brands whose voice and aesthetic you can authentically replicate and grow.
Use tools to turbo-charge your content strategy: Start your free trial with Later today.
Perfect the art of social media with Later
Today, it's just not an option to ignore the incredible power of social media. Savvy social media managers can achieve so much for a brand, whether they're a small start-up or a massive enterprise. With two-thirds of the world's population engaging on social media regularly, it's hard to imagine an industry with a bigger opportunity for growth and huge ROI.
The possibilities are endless, and with the right tools in your belt, you'll be racking up the likes in no time.
Don't try to reinvent the wheel—sign up for a free trial of Later today. We're confident that our intuitive, whole-picture services will make a world of difference.
