We live in a world of social media platforms. Many companies and businesses hire social media managers to manage and update their social media profiles and pages in order to connect with the target audience. Today, we’ll top 10 must-have skills for social managers in detail.
Table of Contents
Who is a Social Media Manager?
The social media manager is a responsible person within the company that measures, filters, executes, and monitors information relevant to the target customer market, competitor’s company, brand, or product. Since SMM represents the company, SMMs position also goes by the name of “voice of the company.” SMM also performs the role of a community manager.
How to Become Social Media Manager
Here’s how to become a social media manager, some of the main points are as follows;
- Marketing or Communication Degree. If you want to become a social media manager, then learn communication and marketing and have a degree in it. After learning it, practice it by yourself before planning to go out and work for somebody else.
- Familiar with Tech Industry Tools. Whether you have a marketing degree or not; you should be familiar with social media marketing tools, analytics, and applications. Most importantly, you should know how to interpret them and follow them.
- Finding Opportunities. It doesn’t matter whatever your location is, you should look for opportunities for yourself and for the growth of your business.
- You’re being watched. Whether you’re running and managing your account or your client’s page; people in your target market are keeping an eye on your social and professional activity. Therefore, you should think carefully before posting anything.
- Adapting & Learning. There are many platforms in the online world; some of them are trending and the others are not. You should know the trending platform, its usage, and how to use it to your advantage. Most important, you should have a learning and adapting attitude toward new things.
- Follow Brands you like. You should create a list of companies and brands that you like and admire, then follow them. Their professional activity would help you to learn many things. Like how they’re managing their platform, their growth rate, dealing with customers, etc.
- Online Portfolio. You should have an online portfolio of your business, product, or your website. It would be a short introduction to your business/blog for new people.
- Adding Experience. You should add relevant experiences and expertise to your portfolio; it would further strengthen your portfolio.
- Time Management Skill. Social media could easily grab your attention and you start surfing and scrolling, and it would waste a lot of your time. Therefore, you should be highly focused on your goal and know how to manage your time.
10 Important Skills for Social Media Manager
Here are the top 10 must-have skills that can increase the performance and productivity of a social media manager.
Communication
Social media is socializing and communication platform. The social media manager should have strong communication skills that know how to interact with people on various social media channels.
You’re the representative of a brand on social media. You should inform the customers about the company’s latest activity and address their complaints. Here you use words, emojis, pictures, gifs, and other symbols to communicate with them.
Strong communication also allows you to effectively communicate with your team inside the company. If some of your team members are weak, then you can offer them training about marketing, social media, customer service, etc.
Writing
The core skill required for social media is writing along with many other skills. That’s why some of the successful social media managers have excellent digital conversation and copywriting skills. Whether it’s an attention-grabbing post or writing concise content tailoring to the emotions of customers; it all requires perfect writing skills.
Smart writers know how to write and use words for different types of audiences. For instance, your Instagram post could comprise more than 2000 words. However, the researches show that the ideal and engaging caption length ranges from 130 to 150 characters.
Editing
Writing is indeed a great plus point for your platform. However, poor writing with grammatical errors, wrong use of words, and repetitive ideas could jeopardize the credibility of your brand. Therefore, you should pay attention to the details and make sure to recheck and edit your content.
Creative
As a social media manager is to differentiate your brand by using creativity. Your content should be exciting and create buzz and suspense in the audience. It may seem easy, but it requires a lot of creative approaches to come up with such content. However, the creative social media managers help you to do the following things;
- Expand your brand’s persona and voice
- Collaborate with team members and brainstorm new ideas
- They add an aesthetic touch to their posts, images, and other content
- Creating audio/visual appealing content
- Taking risks and launching innovative social media campaigns
Creative managers have a great sense of humor and improvise under various circumstances. Some of the following resources that you can use for creativity are; online classes, fast company, improvisation sessions, and creative events.
Efficient
Time management and efficiency are the two main skills for running an effective social media marketing campaign. The social media manager has to study lead generation, distribution rhythm, and campaign strategy at the planning stage. Pro managers use processes, policies, and tools to manage various elements in order. However, social media calendar is a great planning and organizing tool for content management.
Marketing
The role of social media manager comprises various responsibilities like sales, customer experience, marketing, and managing social media platforms. According to an estimate, 47% of social media marketers say that their social media marketing impacts the overall goals and objectives of the company. However, when you connect your marketing and business goal with the social media strategy, then it takes your business growth to another level.
If you want your social media marketing strategy to make an impact on your business, then you should be familiar with various traditional and digital marketing strategies like PR, lead generation, event management, or e-mail marketing. These techniques would help you to connect with customers, amplify sales, and earn revenue resultantly.
Customer Focused
Adding a customer-focused strategy to your social media marketing plan is very important for your business. Therefore, social media managers develop a customer-focused strategy. According to a study by Sprout Social Index, 33% of the customers prefer to contact those brands on social media that offer customer service.
You should not only keep in mind customers’ demands, praise, and needs but also their expectations of the future. Social media managers are the promoter of their businesses. if your business offers efficient customer service, then it would have a strong impact on the hearts and minds of customers.
Developing Connections
The word social media implies socializing. It means one of the main roles of social media managers is to develop a relationship with customers. According to a study, 64% of the customers want a brand that is active on social media with which they can connect. 57% of the customer would spend their money on such a brand that is active. It means that you can develop connections on social media.
Many people have different levels of social media skills and experiences when it comes to developing connections on social media or user engagement. As a social media manager, you should be comfortable with experimenting with new ideas, taking risks, promoting your brand, and understanding the landscape of the business. They would help you to expand your business market.
Fast & Agile
Social media is quickly changing the landscape of the business very quickly; things become outdated in a short time. One of the necessary skills on social media is to exploit new opportunities and trends on time. In other words, we can say that you should quickly respond to the needs and wants of frustrated customers.
When you’re planning a long-term strategy, then your strategy should be dynamic, agile, and flexible. Smart social media managers keep experimenting with various strategies relevant to the changing trends. If you study the market data, trends, and customers’ feedback, then it would make you a quick and agile manager.
Data Analysis
Many of you are familiar with customer data analytics and reporting system. However, efficient social media managers make very good decisions based on the reporting. If you want the growth of your business, then you should use both quantitative and qualitative data.
Collecting social media reports is a very good first step; next, you should analyze the trends, and then develop the plan accordingly. If you want to develop your analytical skill, then check out Google Analytics, Data-Driven marketing series, etc.
Conclusion
After an in-depth study of the article, we’ve concluded that social media marketing is a great skill of our time. If you want to become a social media manager, then you should follow the abovementioned suggestions to get started on your business.
