**6 УРОВНЕЙ В SMM: на каком ты? — Transcript & Summary | SozAI** Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/6-levels-in-smm-which-one-you/ Explore the 6 growth levels in SMM and learn how to advance your career, work with high-paying clients, and master key marketing skills. ## Key Takeaways - SMM career growth follows a six-level trajectory that every specialist experiences. - Foundational skills in business goals, audience understanding, and brand positioning are crucial at the beginner level. - Working knowledge of multiple social media platforms and marketing funnels is essential for success. - High-paying clients exist, but specialists must know how to work with them and continuously upgrade their skills. - Burnout and instability are common but can be overcome by adapting and following a structured growth path. ## What the video covers - The video addresses common challenges faced by SMM specialists such as lack of clients, low fees, burnout, and uncertainty about career growth. - The presenter, Vladlena, is an experienced marketer with 10 years in the field and owner of a 9-year-old marketing agency and academy. - She introduces a concept of six growth levels in SMM, based on analysis of over 200 trained specialists, outlining a clear career progression. - Level 1 SMM specialists are beginners who often work for low pay or barter, focusing on building a portfolio and gaining foundational skills. - Key skills for beginners include understanding business goals, audience analysis, conveying brand meanings, and managing brand positioning on social media. - SMM specialists must be proficient in multiple platforms like Instagram, Telegram, TikTok, VKontakte, and others, adapting to their unique features. - Mastering marketing funnels is essential, especially in markets with advertising restrictions, by guiding audiences through content marketing strategies. - Advancing through levels requires continuous learning and bridging knowledge gaps to work with bigger, more interesting, and higher-paying projects. - The video aims to help SMM specialists understand how to maintain stability and growth even in unstable market conditions. - Vladlena shares personal experiences and practical advice to motivate and guide SMM specialists at all stages of their career. Answers ## Questions about this video What are the main challenges faced by SMM specialists today? SMM specialists often face challenges such as lack of clients, low payment rates, client drop-offs, burnout, and uncertainty about career growth paths. What skills should a beginner SMM specialist focus on? Beginners should focus on understanding business goals, analyzing the audience, conveying brand meanings accurately, managing brand positioning on social media, and mastering multiple social media platforms. How can SMM specialists work with high-paying clients? To work with high-paying clients, specialists need to continuously gain new knowledge, improve their skills, understand client needs deeply, and learn how to manage larger, more complex projects effectively. ## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown 00:00 Speaker A The other day, I was scrolling through Threads and saw a huge number of negative comments from SMM specialists and marketers. Some say there is no work, no clients, and they have been looking for a client for several months already. Others say that clients don't want to pay and they are working for a low fee—10, 15, 20, and some even for 5,000–7,000 rubles. Still others complain that clients arrive but drop off after a month; there is no stability, there is a feeling of burnout and fatigue from this field, and most importantly, a lack of understanding of where to go next, how to grow, and where to pivot if you have been an SMM specialist all your life. I assure you, there is still room to grow in this field, and most importantly, there are big, interesting, and solvent clients. I have owned my marketing agency W for 9 years, as well as an academy, where we train SMM specialists and marketers. Besides that, I have been a practicing marketer for 10 years myself. I speak at universities and at large conferences. I have a podcast, in short, featuring various major entrepreneurs. And as I already said, my agency is 9 years old. During this time, we have lived through a huge number of completely different crises. Ups and downs. That is why I know better than anyone how to change and how to adapt to the situation, to the changes and turbulence that currently exist in our field. So let's figure out how to grow in such unstable times, how to always have a line of big, cool projects, and how to work with high fees in SMM. The answer is actually simple. We have an entire concept that consists of six steps. It is a growth trajectory in SMM. And every SMM specialist, I assure you, absolutely every SMM specialist has gone through all these stages of growth. Including me. Each of us faces the same difficulties, the same problems, and the same worrying questions. The only problem is that many SMM specialists get stuck at a certain level and don't know how to take their next step from there. By gaining new knowledge and experience, you level up, which means you start working with larger, more interesting, and higher-paying projects. And fees in SMM can indeed be high. For example, our minimum fee for SMM at the agency is 250,000 rubles. So, such clients definitely exist. You just need to know how to work with them. Basically, in this video, I suggest we break down what each of these steps consists of and what needs to be done to move to the next stage. Yes, by the way, this concept was not just pulled out of thin air. All this data is taken from an analysis of over 200 SMM specialists who have completed our training programs. I assure you, you will recognize yourself in every one of these stages. So, at the first stage, the SMM specialist is just starting their journey in this profession. They are taking their first steps and trying to understand what the requirements are and what businesses want to see. At this stage, the SMM specialist doesn't really value themselves very much. They are ready to work practically for food, they don't know much yet, but they have a lot of ambition and a desire to show great results to both themselves and the client. At this stage, SMM specialists are, of course, working to build a great portfolio for themselves. And I was once an SMM specialist like that, too. Ten years ago, I worked for a dress. They simply gave me a monthly deposit that I could spend at a clothing store. Our collaboration ended when I simply had no more options for what else I could get from that store. I was already giving dresses to my friends and my mom. And, naturally, it wasn't as interesting to me anymore once all the good dresses were gone. I also worked for food. For example, they would give me a card. Every month I could spend 4,000 rubles. And that's fine, of course, when you're a university student and can grab a coffee or a sandwich with that voucher. But when you are an adult, you naturally have responsibilities. You need to pay rent and provide for your family. Therefore, if you are over 25 and starting your path in this field, I understand you perfectly; nobody wants to work for food. So let's figure out what skills an SMM specialist needs to have to work on projects even at this level for at least 20,000–30,000 rubles. So, at this stage, you must have a foundation in social media marketing. SMM is specifically about marketing on social networks. It’s not about content creation, not about making pictures, not about pretty editing; it’s about the effectiveness of work on social media. So, what should you be able to do here? First, you must be able to work with business goals. There are four goals that businesses come with most often. These are creating media around the brand, increasing reach or views, growing the follower count, and increasing leads. These are the four main goals, and you need to learn how to work with them. Next, you must be able to work with the audience: understand their pain points, what triggers a purchase, what objections they have to buying, what their needs are for the product, what their desires are, and most importantly, what their content needs are. Many SMM specialists don't answer this question at all. Who is the audience following? What kind of content do they watch? On what platform, and how often? If you know this about your audience, I assure you, your content will be more effective and will start delivering results, which means you can increase your service rates, which is quite nice. Besides this, an SMM specialist must be able to work with meanings. Not just creating content for the sake of content, but ensuring that all important information about the brand is accurately conveyed to the end consumer. It is important to learn how to identify and extract these core meanings. In addition, you must correctly manage a company's positioning on social media. This doesn't mean that you, as a marketer, have to invent the USP, differentiate the company from others on the market, or develop its mission, vision, and values. Definitely not. The brand already has all of that in one way or another when you arrive to work there. But you must be able to read it correctly and convey it on social networks. Package it visually, style the content correctly, communicate with the audience properly, and respond to messages correctly. So that the brand's positioning is easily understood through the eyes of the consumer. And, of course, you must be able to work with the various platforms that exist today. The market changes, social networks change, and each platform has its own specifics, so it is important to be able to work with Telegram, Instagram, Threads, VKontakte, YouTube, Dzen, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Odnoklassniki, and, well, Max. Why is this important? Because every platform has its own unique features. Different groups of people of different ages are on different platforms. Just as different businesses are represented in different ways on different platforms. Therefore, all of this is also important to consider. And lastly, as SMM specialists, you need to master funnels at this first stage. Since targeted advertising is prohibited in the Russian Federation, we can only promote through content marketing, which means we need to learn how to guide the audience from one social network to another. For example, you should learn how to convert a viewer of a Reel into a follower, then redirect that audience to a Telegram bot, where you can work with them through content and lead this potential client to a sale. So, it is also important to learn how to work with funnels in this case. If you realize at this stage that you have gaps, your task is to quickly bridge them by acquiring additional knowledge. If you feel confident in each of these areas, then you are most likely at the next level of development in SMM. At the second stage, as an SMM specialist, you have likely already worked with various business niches. You have gaine 00:15 Speaker A already. Others say that clients don't want to pay and they are working for a low fee—10, 15, 20, and some even for 5,000–7,000 rubles. Still others complain that clients arrive but drop off after a month; there is no 00:32 Speaker A stability, there is a feeling of burnout and fatigue from this field, and most importantly, a lack of understanding of where to go next, how to grow, and where to pivot if you have been an SMM specialist all your life. I 00:48 Speaker A assure you, there is still room to grow in this field, and most importantly, there are big, interesting, and solvent clients. I have owned my marketing agency W for 9 years, as well as an academy, where we train SMM specialists 01:02 Speaker A and marketers. Besides that, I have been a practicing marketer for 10 years myself. I speak at universities and at large conferences. I have a podcast, in short, featuring various major entrepreneurs. And as I already said, my agency is 9 years old. During this 01:21 Speaker A time, we have lived through a huge number of completely different crises. Ups and downs. That is why I know better than anyone how to change and how to adapt to the situation, to the changes and turbulence that currently 01:37 Speaker A exist in our field. So let's figure out how to grow in such unstable times, how to always have a line of big, cool projects, and how to work with high fees in SMM. The answer is actually simple. We have an entire concept that 01:56 Speaker A consists of six steps. It is a growth trajectory in SMM. And every SMM specialist, I assure you, absolutely every SMM specialist has gone through all these stages of growth. Including me. Each of us faces the same difficulties, the same problems, and 02:15 Speaker A the same worrying questions. The only problem is that many SMM specialists get stuck at a certain level and don't know how to take their next step from there. By gaining new knowledge and experience, you level up, which means 02:31 Speaker A you start working with larger, more interesting, and higher-paying projects . And fees in SMM can indeed be high. 02:39 Speaker A For example, our minimum fee for SMM at the agency is 250,000 rubles. So, such clients definitely exist. You just need to know how to work with them. 02:51 Speaker A Basically, in this video, I suggest we break down what each of these steps consists of and what needs to be done to move to the next stage. Yes, by the way, this concept was not just pulled out of thin air. All this data is taken 03:05 Speaker A from an analysis of over 200 SMM specialists who have completed our training programs. I assure you, you will recognize yourself in every one of these stages. So, at the first stage, the SMM specialist is just starting their journey in this profession. They 03:19 Speaker A are taking their first steps and trying to understand what the requirements are and what businesses want to see. At this stage, the SMM specialist doesn't really value themselves very much. They are ready to work practically for food, they don't know much yet, but they have 03:36 Speaker A a lot of ambition and a desire to show great results to both themselves and the client. At this stage, SMM specialists are, of course, working to build a great portfolio for themselves. 03:48 Speaker A And I was once an SMM specialist like that, too. Ten years ago, I worked for a dress. They simply gave me a monthly deposit that I could spend at a clothing store. Our collaboration ended when I simply had no more options for 04:02 Speaker A what else I could get from that store. I was already giving dresses to my friends and my mom. And, naturally, it wasn't as interesting to me anymore once all the good dresses were gone. I also worked for food. For example, they 04:17 Speaker A would give me a card. Every month I could spend 4,000 rubles. And that's fine, of course, when you're a university student and can grab a coffee or a sandwich with that voucher. 04:30 Speaker A But when you are an adult, you naturally have responsibilities. You need to pay rent and provide for your family. Therefore, if you are over 25 and starting your path in this field, I understand you perfectly; nobody wants to work for food. So let's figure out 04:48 Speaker A what skills an SMM specialist needs to have to work on projects even at this level for at least 20,000–30,000 rubles. So, at this stage, you must have a foundation in social media marketing. SMM is specifically about marketing on social networks. It’s 05:09 Speaker A not about content creation, not about making pictures, not about pretty editing; it’s about the effectiveness of work on social media. So, what should you be able to do here? First, you must be able to work with business goals. There are four goals that 05:25 Speaker A businesses come with most often. These are creating media around the brand, increasing reach or views, growing the follower count, and increasing leads. 05:35 Speaker A These are the four main goals, and you need to learn how to work with them. 05:40 Speaker A Next, you must be able to work with the audience: understand their pain points, what triggers a purchase, what objections they have to buying, what their needs are for the product, what their desires are, and most importantly , what their content needs are. Many 05:55 Speaker A SMM specialists don't answer this question at all. Who is the audience following? What kind of content do they watch? On what platform, and how often? 06:04 Speaker A If you know this about your audience, I assure you, your content will be more effective and will start delivering results, which means you can increase your service rates, which is quite nice . Besides this, an SMM specialist must 06:19 Speaker A be able to work with meanings. Not just creating content for the sake of content, but ensuring that all important information about the brand is accurately conveyed to the end consumer. It is important to learn how to identify and extract these core 06:35 Speaker A meanings. In addition, you must correctly manage a company's positioning on social media. This doesn't mean that you, as a marketer, have to invent the USP, differentiate the company from others on the market, or develop its mission, vision, and 06:50 Speaker A values. Definitely not. The brand already has all of that in one way or another when you arrive to work there. 06:57 Speaker A But you must be able to read it correctly and convey it on social networks. Package it visually, style the content correctly, communicate with the audience properly, and respond to messages correctly. So that the brand's positioning is easily understood 07:14 Speaker A through the eyes of the consumer. And, of course, you must be able to work with the various platforms that exist today. The market changes, social networks change, and each platform has its own specifics, so it is important to be able to work with Telegram, 07:32 Speaker A Instagram, Threads, VKontakte, YouTube, Dzen, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Odnoklassniki, and, well, Max. Why is this important? Because every platform has its own unique features. Different groups of people of different ages are on different platforms. Just as different businesses are represented in 07:52 Speaker A different ways on different platforms. Therefore, all of this is also important to consider. And lastly. As SMM specialists, you need to master funnels at this first stage. Since targeted advertising is prohibited in the Russian Federation, we can only 08:08 Speaker A promote through content marketing, which means we need to learn how to guide the audience from one social network to another. For example, you should learn how to convert a viewer of a Reel into a follower, then redirect that audience to a Telegram bot, where 08:26 Speaker A you can work with them through content and lead this potential client to a sale. So, it is also important to learn how to work with funnels in this case. 08:37 Speaker A If you realize at this stage that you have gaps, your task is to quickly bridge them by acquiring additional knowledge. If you feel confident in each of these areas, then you are most likely at the next level of development 08:53 Speaker A in SMM. At the second stage, as an SMM specialist, you have likely already worked with various business niches. 09:02 Speaker A You have gained experience and can create quality content, but you are probably not yet working with strategic SMM. You are not yet creating the strategies that form the foundation of all your actions. You are good at coming up with creative ideas and 09:21 Speaker A concepts, but you don't understand why exactly these ideas are fundamental and how they should bring results to the client. At this stage, SMM specialists want to get rid of chaos, structure their work, stop being the "hands," and start thinking strategically, becoming 09:40 Speaker A the "brain." of the project. At this stage, SMM specialists want to increase their service rates and have the ability to influence the business. This is exactly what implementing an SMM strategy helps with. So, what are the components here? First, of course, is 09:56 Speaker A analytics, when you analyze the market, competitors, and the target audience. Second is concept development, when you think through the entire unique visual and brand message for social media, including the tone of voice and visual components: color, typography, and so 10:15 Speaker A on. Next is content marketing, with unique segments that distinguish this specific brand from others. Following that are promotion methods, both free and paid. And, of course, forecasting. 10:27 Speaker A This is the answer to the question: " Why should this specific volume of content lead us to a result?" And what exactly is that result? And within what timeframe can we achieve this result? 10:38 Speaker A In short, it is working specifically with numbers. It is a data-driven approach. There is a whole video on the channel about this; make sure to watch it. By the way, very soon a full video about developing an SMM strategy will 10:51 Speaker A appear on the channel. So, be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so yet. There is a lot of useful information here about SMM and marketing. What is important to know at this stage? It is a great stage for 11:05 Speaker A growth and scaling because you start making decisions based on numbers and data, not just on your creative side, not just on your imagination. Besides that, an SMM strategy is a good way to increase your rates, because it is a 11:19 Speaker A separate service and is sold separately . Most freelancers sell an SMM strategy for 15, 20, 30, or 40,000 rubles. But if we are talking about an agency, the average market price is 150,000 rubles. 11:33 Speaker A for developing an SMM strategy. So, there is plenty of room to grow. And this is where all the work of an SMM specialist begins. Yes, and by the way, large companies very often come to SMM specialists to develop only the SMM 11:45 Speaker A strategy, while the management is handled by an in-house team. This is done so that the company can gain external experience and expertise that they can implement in their own department's work. Therefore, they may also come to you separately for this 12:00 Speaker A specific service. If you develop an SMM strategy at this stage, but it’s just a five-page document that you never return to again. If it is just a content plan, then it is merely a nominal strategy that does not form the 12:14 Speaker A basis of all your work. But an SMM strategy is good when the specialist and the team return to it regularly every week, and then this strategy is updated. Therefore, if any of this is not fully implemented for you, be sure 12:29 Speaker A to take note. This is the next step you need to strengthen to reach a new level and start working with large projects. 12:39 Speaker A The next stage that all SMM specialists go through is a lack of consistency and solidity. At this stage, SMM specialists realize that they want to fully influence the business, understand all the numbers, all conversions, and understand the cost 12:55 Speaker A per lead and cost per subscriber. At this stage, the SMM specialist realizes that they are fully influencing the growth of the company. The number of leads and the number of sales depend on their work. Therefore, here the SMM 13:09 Speaker A specialist wants to get rid of chaos in their work, introduce consistency, structure, clarity, work with larger companies, with more interesting tasks, and work accordingly with high budgets. 13:20 Speaker A And also increase the price tag for their services. In this case, your task is to implement a data-driven approach. 13:28 Speaker A This is a full-scale digitization that we work with at the Wave marketing agency. And, actually, this is what we teach in the academy as well. We have our own methodology. In SMM, it consists of four main stages. In 13:41 Speaker A marketing, it consists of eight main stages that every project goes through. And this helps us with 99.9%accuracy to forecast results for projects. At this stage, you must definitely be able to forecast. You must understand how much reach is needed to arrive at a certain 14:04 Speaker A number of client leads. At this stage, you must be able to clearly work with a goal in the form of leads. When a client comes to you, they can often say that their goal is, for example, to make a revenue of 10 million or maybe 14:20 Speaker A 20 million. And you must be able to calculate how many leads are needed to reach this goal, how many sales need to be made, and how much reach is required , based on all the conversions obtained . After that, accordingly, your task is 14:36 Speaker A to decompose each of the months so that you have a clear plan for the amount of reach. And knowing how much reach one piece of content receives on average, you can accurately calculate how many posts you need to make in order to meet 14:49 Speaker A the goal. After that, you must be able to form hypotheses that will definitely lead to a result. Next, regularly track and monitor the results of your work. 15:01 Speaker A What does this mean? It means that at this stage, it is important to analyze, draw conclusions, and reflect. It is important to collect statistics every week, not once a month, because it will be easier to make adjustments from week 15:15 Speaker A to week to ensure you meet the client's goal. And finally, there is profitability. This is not just a point ; it is an important rule that you, as an SMM specialist at this stage, must know. You must clearly understand that 15:31 Speaker A your SMM work must pay off, because SMM is part of marketing, and marketing must be profitable. If a marketing tool doesn't pay off, if it causes losses, if it brings in fewer sales than the cost of that tool, then sooner or later 15:48 Speaker A it will be skipped or removed. Accordingly, your task is to calculate the profitability of your services and your work. And how is profitability calculated? We divide the cost of acquiring one new customer by the LTV. 16:06 Speaker A This is the answer to the question of how much money a client brings in over their entire lifetime. And this ratio should be one to four. That is the ideal scenario. Well, at least one to three for the tool to pay off. If you 16:19 Speaker A know how to calculate this, then congratulations, everything is great. This means you are most likely already at the fourth stage of SMM development. 16:30 Speaker A Let me remind you that each of us has definitely gone through or is currently going through all these stages. You will definitely recognize yourself somewhere in here. Be sure to write in the comments which stage you are at. So 16:43 Speaker A , at the fourth stage, you are likely tired of being a jack-of-all-trades with no free time. At this stage, SMM specialists work, objectively speaking, 24/7. They do everything: shoot content , edit, write copy, develop strategies, post everything, communicate with the 17:01 Speaker A client, and moderate everything. In short, they do everything for everyone. No vacation, no days off. The client writes whenever they want, even at night. And you end up doing those tasks at night. You can't even remember the last time you had a break. And, 17:16 Speaker A generally, you really don't feel your best. If you recognized yourself in this description, congratulations, you are ready for delegation, and that is the best part because at this stage you can expand significantly. You can build your own team or department. And in 17:34 Speaker A this case, you can start working with a larger number of projects. You can become a project manager or head of an SMM department. In trendy terms, it's called Head of SMM. In short, it's great. There is room for development 17:47 Speaker A here, room to scale. In this case, what should you have developed in the first place? There is the external, so to speak, service and management related to the client that is important to implement. There is internal management , which will help you competently 18:07 Speaker A delegate and pass tasks to your employees. It is important to know all this because many people face the fact that they hire a helper, an assistant, a copywriter, a designer, a Reels maker , or anyone at all, but find that these 18:22 Speaker A specialists don't listen, don't hear, and you end up having to redo everything for them. Because there are so many edits, it's easier to just do it all yourself from the start. Because of this, you yourself get tired. That 18:34 Speaker A is why it is important to first organize internal management. Here, you must have a knowledge base. This is a set of rules and instructions on how everything works in your projects. How you communicate with the client, when you answer and when you don't, what the 18:48 Speaker A strategy looks like, where everything is, how it’s processed, and which folder on the drive it’s in. All of this must be documented. Thank God for neural networks, because these instructions can now truly be made in 10 minutes. Previously, it required a 19:04 Speaker A huge amount of time. It was such a chore to deal with all of this. But now , everything is done much faster. 19:11 Speaker A Besides this, you must have business processes. These are written-out stages with a clear understanding of how many days are allotted for each stage. That is, for example, when a client comes to you, what happens next? You prepare a 19:26 Speaker A commercial proposal for them, sign a contract, and then the client must pay. You work on a prepayment or postpaid basis. Work begins after payment, and, accordingly, only then do you get on a call with the client, conduct a 19:39 Speaker A briefing, and then the strategy development begins. How many days the development lasts, the strategy, then it is presented, and then work on the project begins. In short, all these stages must be clearly written out, and there must be an understanding of how 19:53 Speaker A many days pass between these stages, so that everything is clear. Next, you must have task managers, that is, services that help work with projects more clearly, where you can post your tasks, especially if you work with a team. At our agency, we use the WEEEK 20:12 Speaker A service. It is super convenient. Over 9 years, we have tried a huge number of different services, including Bitrix. 20:20 Speaker A But, of course, for creative people, you need something more comfortable. That's why we settled on WEEEK. There must also be regular management. This is that very table where you must collect all the statistics for your project every month. And when you have 20:36 Speaker A everything ready internally, you are ready for delegation. That is, only at this stage can you hand everything over to a specialist. Just answer this question for yourself right now. Have you handed over work to your assistant this way? If yes, that’s great. If 20:53 Speaker A not, then you need to go back and prepare all of this. Because if an assistant just comes to you and you spend an hour on Zoom telling them how you work, that’s not enough. Most likely, you’ll find that you aren't 21:09 Speaker A satisfied with the result, and you'll probably fire that person in the near future. But in reality, the problem wasn't that they didn't understand you or that they are a bad specialist, it's just that there were no documents to 21:25 Speaker A rely on for new issues or new processes . In addition to this, external management is also important. This is management in relation to the client. 21:33 Speaker A You must have reports, and not just a table where you automatically copy and paste data. It should effectively be analytics with conclusions and reflection. Including the scope of work , the results of each task, answers to what worked and what didn't, what we 21:51 Speaker A take forward, how we adjust, and what our plan is for the next period. Also, there should be weekly digests where you tell the client what stage you’re at and what has been done, so they don't worry that something in the 22:05 Speaker A project is going wrong. It’s also cool if you have an NPS, which is a questionnaire form like in Yandex Taxi, where at the end you are asked to rate the driver and you put a star from one to five. That is what an NPS is. Here, 22:22 Speaker A you should collect feedback from the client in the same way at the end of the month. This will allow you to adjust your work in the moment. And the last thing is the exit interview. If a client leaves you, it is important to 22:33 Speaker A finish working with them on a good note . You need to invite them to an exit interview. This is an interview where you politely find out what went wrong in the work so that you can fix it later. For example, we very often give 22:48 Speaker A gifts when we finish a partnership. For instance, here we gave a bouquet of flowers because we worked with the client for 5 years. And, of course, it's important to stay on good terms, because you never know if this client 23:03 Speaker A will return to you and if they will continue to recommend you. And it is, of course, beneficial for you if the client returns and recommends you to their friends and acquaintances. If you have all of this implemented, congratulations—it means you are at 23:18 Speaker A the fifth or sixth stage of the SMM development trajectory. If anything is missing, you must return to that stage. 23:27 Speaker A Refine each of these points to ensure everything runs smoothly for you. Now, let's move on to the fifth stage. At this stage, SMM specialists are already a little burned out. Lots of experience , several years in the field, many 23:43 Speaker A clients, many cases, experience in various business sectors, deep knowledge, and high expertise. Everyone asks you for advice. This knowledge is practically gushing out of you in all directions, as you are so well-versed in the SMM field. Everything I have 24:00 Speaker A mentioned so far, you likely already know. You were listening and thinking, "My God, I already know all of this, there's nothing new here." If you've caught yourself feeling that way, then at this stage, you're tired of knowing everything but having no money. 24:17 Speaker A There’s little money, projects pay poorly, and there are few clients. For some reason, they don't value you, and it’s unclear how to get out of this. 24:26 Speaker A Consequently, at this stage, you get annoyed by those who have just started their SMM journey, yet they're already posting their ten-thousandth Reel and attracting clients. You also want cool, large-scale projects, you want clients to come to you instead of you seeking 24:42 Speaker A them out, and you want long-term partnerships. To achieve this, your goal is to build a system. A system that will regularly bring you new leads . Actually, I understand you perfectly, because in my 9 years of development in 24:58 Speaker A the SMM field, I’ve certainly gone through many different stages—back in 2017, when we were a regional SMM agency, we worked for 15,000 rubles. 25:09 Speaker A And we already had a team. In 2020, we started working with Europe. Even while being based in the region, various companies reached out to us. We mainly worked with France, Italy, and Great Britain. And that was a super cool 25:26 Speaker A stage. We worked with Gérard Depardieu and his studio in Paris. It was at this exact stage that we became TikTok partners in Russia. And we had a huge base of creators that we promoted on TikTok. Overall, it was a great stage. 25:42 Speaker A And all this while staying in the region. If you say you are in a small town where they don't pay for SMM, and that everything is bad and there are no clients, that is not true. The question is, what is your goal? While based in 25:56 Speaker A Tomsk, in Siberia, in a region, we had big, major, interesting projects. Projects with non-standard tasks and good paychecks. On top of that, there was COVID and huge restrictions, so absolutely everything is possible. And the fact that you don't live in Moscow 26:14 Speaker A doesn't mean at all that you have to earn little. That is absolutely not true. Just work remotely with Moscow companies. That can also be done. By the way, I talked about how to work remotely with companies in a video 26:28 Speaker A where I answered your questions. Be sure to watch it. Later, I moved to Moscow and started sending the team large federal projects from there. The team worked in Tomsk, in Siberia. I was already in Moscow. And, accordingly, I 26:45 Speaker A worked with them remotely. Later, we rebranded into a marketing agency because the market changed and business needs changed. After that, we adapted to the market realities for a long time , implementing this data-driven approach and digitalization, including in marketing and creative work. I 27:03 Speaker A believe we were the first to start talking about this so actively and obsessing over numbers in SMM and marketing. And, in fact, in '26 we are moving toward automation with the help of artificial intelligence. You might ask, why am I telling you all this? So 27:21 Speaker A that you understand that being in a small town, the lack of large interesting projects, or the market crises happening right now are not reasons to stop talking about yourself and promoting your services. You must treat yourself like a business. Only in 27:39 Speaker A this case will you have clients. Only if you work systematically on your own marketing, if you bring in clients, and if you work with content regularly, only then will you have a queue of clients that you can then monetize. The 27:57 Speaker A system for working with content, for example, in my agency, looks like this. It is an entire media network with different YouTube channels, several Instagram accounts, and several Telegram channels, from which the audience moves on to submit a request. 28:12 Speaker A We will look at this format of a media network in another video. Be sure to subscribe; it will be out very soon. 28:18 Speaker A There we will figure out what this model is and how to work with it. 28:23 Speaker A Accordingly, the main thing at this stage is to learn how to attract an audience, do it regularly and consistently, and know how to sell at high price points. This is also another important skill. Most specialists, unfortunately, are simply afraid to do 28:39 Speaker A this. They are afraid to quote higher prices and end up lowering them. It seems that if they lower the price by 5,000 rubles, that they will be the one chosen. But I assure you, clients often won't even notice this small discount; 28:53 Speaker A they choose based on the results and effectiveness that you can provide for your services. We will talk in more detail about how to reach higher price points this autumn and how not to miss the growth opportunities currently available in SMM at my open lecture. Be 29:11 Speaker A sure to come and register. For 2 hours, we will go through everything in detail with examples on how to not just stay afloat, but to grow during such a period of change. The link for registration will be in the description 29:22 Speaker A of this video. Definitely come along. If you currently have a line of clients , and every month is booked with various new projects and new clients. 29:32 Speaker A If you are not afraid to sell, if you love doing it, and if you sell well at high price points and are not shy about it, then everything is great. I congratulate you, you are at the finish line of growth in SMM, and then you are 29:47 Speaker A most likely at the sixth stage. This is the stage when everything is already great for you, there are clients, projects, everything is stable, you have a lot of knowledge, and you work with strategy and a team. The team may 29:59 Speaker A even be autonomous, and you are truly just the brain of these projects. You are responsible for the strategy, the vision, and the direction of these projects, so you are most likely currently facing questions solely about accelerating your work to be more 30:14 Speaker A convenient and interesting for clients. And this, of course, is automation using artificial intelligence. At this stage, you just want everything to work faster, clearer, with higher quality, and more efficiently, so that you are more attractive compared to other 30:31 Speaker A competitors on the market. In fact, there are three components of content that works in 2026. This same system will also work in 2027. This is having a large number of content units. Now you need to release one to three units 30:50 Speaker A a day, and preferably more. This is cross-platform presence, when you appear on different platforms simultaneously and have that very media network where content is distributed across different social networks. This allows you to get as much reach as possible, as many touchpoints as 31:05 Speaker A possible, and consequently, more leads and sales. And this, of course, is forecasting and ROI, when you can manage all these platforms and this content using numbers, and when you can calculate effectiveness. And so, to do all this, it is important to implement 31:21 Speaker A artificial intelligence, because that is the only way to handle such a volume of content and such a number of platforms. Therefore, in this case, it is important to implement AI and build a system. For this, you can use 31:34 Speaker A assistants and agents that automate some of your processes and take routine work off your hands. For example, you can use artificial intelligence to develop strategies, though not entirely . It's not just one prompt that you send, saying: "Develop an SMM strategy 31:53 Speaker A for a beauty salon." Of course not. That way, you will get an absolutely poor result and a low-quality strategy. 32:00 Speaker A Therefore, it is important to implement prompt engineering here, where you know how to create these prompts effectively , and assign different blocks and stages to neural networks to speed up this SMM strategy. For example, before implementing artificial intelligence, 32:21 Speaker A we used to develop an SMM strategy in two weeks. Now it can be done in 3 days , and it will be of the same high quality. Besides that, there is trend watching—a system that allows you to find only the pieces of content among 32:37 Speaker A an abundance of material that have gone viral for competitors in the same niche . In this case, you can easily adapt this content for yourself, and accordingly, spend less time coming up with a creative idea, writing a script, 32:55 Speaker A approving it, and executing it creatively. Well, naturally, that just takes up a lot of time. You can set up a system using a neural network that will select only those formats that will perform well for you. And you 33:11 Speaker A don't have to spend time on this or do it manually. There has long been a service called Viral, where you can find trending content with just one click and, with the help of AI assistants, create content using neural 33:31 Speaker A networks. In short, Viral is a super service. We have been using it ourselves for the last six months. It speeds up our work significantly. In the description of this video, you will find a promo code that will allow you 33:44 Speaker A to use this service for free for a month and a half. Definitely use it in your work to speed things up. Next is the integration of neural networks into content creation. This is video and photo generation. Here, I don't think 33:57 Speaker A you'll surprise anyone with this anymore. Now it's a foundation that truly produces higher quality content every month, which is increasingly difficult to distinguish from real videos. After that is distribution— the ability to publish such a large volume of content across various 34:14 Speaker A platforms. This also takes a lot of time, especially if a brand is present on five or six platforms at once. 34:24 Speaker A Accordingly, to speed this up. You can also use neural networks for this. And finally, content analysis and conclusions. If you upload your entire knowledge library to your assistant, it will be able to analyze your work results quite expertly, based 34:39 Speaker A specifically on your approach, and even provide recommendations. Of course, you cannot rely on neural networks blindly and move forward with your eyes closed based on the plan they suggest. 34:53 Speaker A Nevertheless, if you use artificial intelligence skillfully, know how to prompt correctly, understand the difference between an assistant and an agent, and use the skills in Claude that significantly speed up your work, it can truly help you reach a new level 35:09 Speaker A in SMM. If you know everything I mentioned about the sixth stage, then I congratulate you. You are at the most important stage of development in the SMM profession. At this point, if I were you, I would either think about 35:27 Speaker A scaling up and possibly opening your own agency (perhaps you are already a founder of one), or it might be a sign that you need to move into the field of marketing and start your development from the bottom rung, working your way 35:43 Speaker A up to the top level in marketing. Write in the comments which stage of the SMM trajectory you have found yourself on. 35:52 Speaker A The first, second, third, fourth, fifth , or sixth. It will be very interesting for me to read. Be sure to subscribe and don't forget to come to my lecture on how an SMM specialist can grow even during turbulent times. All the details 36:04 Speaker A will be in the description of this video. 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