Answers
What does a social media manager actually do?
A good social media manager owns four things: the strategy for what gets said, the production of content that says it, the conversations in comments and DMs, and the reporting that decides what changes next month.
Strategy is deciding which platforms you belong on, what you will be known for, and which content formats carry your offer. Without it, everything downstream is guesswork that happens to be busy.
Production is the visible part: filming, editing, photography, design, copywriting and scheduling. It is also where most retainers are silently thin — plenty of managers reformat what you send them and never create anything original.
Community management is where money is made or lost. Replies, DMs, comments, objections, questions about pricing. If nobody is accountable for turning conversations into bookings, the content is decoration.
Reporting should end in a decision, not a screenshot. Which content produced enquiries, what will be doubled, what is being killed. If your monthly report is a list of impressions, you are being reported to rather than managed.