What Qualifications Must I Have to Work in Social Media Management?
A successful social media manager needs a broad set of talents, much like any senior marketing position, to produce interesting social material that turns as many followers as possible into devoted consumers.
If you’re interested in becoming a social media manager but aren’t sure where to begin, this post will show you which abilities are crucial to develop in order to do so.
What does a social media manager do?
A Social Media Manager is typically the person in an organization who is entrusted with overseeing, carrying out, filtering, and measuring the social media presence of a product, brand, company, or even an individual.
A social media manager is frequently referred to as the “voice of the organization.” The position may also be known as “Community Manager” (although this term has become a little out of date) or “Digital and Social Media Manager.”
Why Hire a Social Media Manager?
A corporation’s marketing efforts, company information, and brand promotions are all created and maintained by social media managers for use on various social media platforms. Check your content’s progress using a digital marketing campaign checklist.
Additionally, they utilize either free or paid tools, are aware of the most effective social media analytics, and reply to queries and comments in accordance with the tone and policies of the organization. The goal of social media managers is to constantly push new ideas and formats while monitoring how effectively those ideas are performing.
Social media managers may answer to the Head of Content or Brand, a Social Media Director (in larger organizations), or both. To generate lead-generation campaigns that the sales team can turn into income, they collaborate with other creative departments like marketing and public relations as well as the sales department. It is expected of a social media manager to stay current on business and industry news as well as emerging trends.
A bachelor’s degree in marketing, public relations, or a related field is often required for Social Media Manager positions, which are in high demand.
The job is fast-paced and diversified, requiring a lot of different responsibilities in a single day! A Social Media Manager might perform the following tasks, among others:
Create the content on different platforms – The strategies you employ to increase your Facebook reach may not be effective on Instagram. Look at the kind of material that will work on each platform, such as videos, gifs, infographics, blogs, etc.
Monitor social analytics – This is to ensure that your time and money are going to the right locations and the right people. You need to know which campaigns are effective (or ineffective) across all channels.
Plan your social media plan – You might need to start from scratch to promote a deal or new product.
Measure and prove ROI – Set measurable objectives for a new campaign across pertinent channels, and produce a report to assess performance. To achieve your goals at the proper price, use a social media campaign calculator.
Plan your social media updates – Every platform has an “optimal” time for content posting. Making plans in advance helps to lighten burdens and ensures that material gets released when you’re sleeping but not when your audience is!
Find curated information that is pertinent – Some of your social media posts should represent global events or advancements that are important to your audience. Research relevant third-party content, then spread it.
Engage with your audience – The goal of your social media is to increase engagement. So, reply to any comments and address customer inquiries.
Review and fill out your content calendar – You must plan your content in this fast-paced world. To remain on top of things, fill your social media schedule for the coming days or even weeks.
These are but a few examples of the kinds of jobs you could encounter. But keep in mind that every day might be unique, so managing your content schedule and social media campaigns is essential for online success.
Social media training online can point you in the proper direction and assist you in developing advanced skills to rise to management!
7 Qualities of a Great Social Media Manager
Given what a Social Media Manager’s job entails, here are some talents you’ll need to succeed in this position.
1. Composing
Social media managers write a lot—up to a dozen pieces every day, on average. Additionally, each social network demands a slightly different writing style. For instance, LinkedIn calls for a more formal tone, whereas Facebook is lighter and more enjoyable. Understanding SEO copywriting is also highly beneficial. (More to follow!)
You must be able to develop messaging that your brand’s audience can readily understand and that encourages a favorable attitude. In essence, the social media manager should establish themselves as the company’s “voice” and strengthen their brand through writing. Several significant forms of writing include:
• Effective headline writing that is brief
• engrossing beginnings
• captions for images and video
• Text that is organized for simple reading (bullet points and numbering are essential because customers will skim and scan subtitles!)
2. Analysis
Social media managers need to stay current with the rapidly evolving social and digital media landscape. This includes keeping up with new measurement and analytics tools, global and industry trends, and monitoring your competitors’ actions, even on a daily basis.
Excellent social media managers set up Google Alerts on trending subjects and monitor trending content using Feedly, Ahrefs, and BuzzSumo. In addition to hashtag research, the Twitter Trends sidebar and the TikTok “Discover” button are helpful.
3. SEO proficiency
The idea that SEO should be treated separately from content marketing and social media within enterprises is fading, despite the fact that SEO is frequently seen as a separate department.
In actuality, SEO may significantly affect the material you post on social media. Knowing this, a smart social media manager tries to create content that is optimized for search engines on social media. When you include SEO in your approach, you can draw in a wider audience that is interested in your goods or services, which will result in more potential clients.
When considering merging SEO and social media, consider the following:
• Do you comprehend the link between social media exposure and better SERP placement?
• Do you have a working knowledge of long-tail and short-tail keywords for SEO? Find out the 5 steps of keyword research using this infographic.
• How will you use social media to promote the material from your blog?
• Do you know what kinds of material are best for boosting SEO?
• Do you understand how increasing website traffic affects sales for your business?
4. Knowledge of social networks
The requirement for excellent social media abilities in a social media manager may seem evident. Even while you can pick things up over time by researching and experimenting, if you want to work for a big corporation, you’ll need to have a few years of experience.
You’ll need the following expertise to surpass your rivals:
• Recognizing the optimal content types for each platform
• Knowing the various hours, times, and days that each platform prefers
• Having knowledge of platform-specific content optimization
• Understanding of social media performance and analytics
• Utilizing the top free audience listening tools available, the capacity to engage an audience through social media posts.
5. Customer Support
Social media managers need to make sure they have the necessary abilities because 47% of customers favor firms that provide great social media customer service.
Customers frequently turn to social media accounts for assistance with queries regarding goods and services, so if no one is available to respond to those questions (even on the weekends and after hours!), their perceptions of that company are likely to suffer. An effective social media manager is aware that your brand’s social media presence serves as its online voice and face. As a result, whatever they post or do on social media represents the brand.
Here are some statistics on the significance of social media and customer service. Highlights consist of:
• 70% of individuals anticipate messaging organizations more in the future with inquiries about customer service.
• In 2021, the number of digital customer service encounters will rise by 40%.
• Bad customer service is cited as a concern when making an online purchase by 60% of internet users.
• Although the job of a social media manager is frequently described as being 9 to 5, employees should be accessible at all times to answer queries and comments. The majority of social media managers have mobile access to their company accounts so they can reply as needed.
6. Visual Intelligence
Although you’ll post a lot of textual information on social media, visual content is equally important. You need to know how to generate social media content for each platform because the perfect video or photo can be shared hundreds or even thousands of times.
Design expertise is important for social media managers so they can make aesthetically appealing graphics to go with their posts. Maintaining awareness of the everyday emergence of new memes can be made easier with the aid of Know Your Meme (if appropriate for your company).
If you can develop some video skills, it would be quite beneficial because the video is also a crucial part of your social media approach. Good social media managers will “recognize outstanding video when they see it, and most crucially have a clear knowledge of social video trends and how they integrate into each major network,” according to Hootsuite.
The caliber of your videos is crucial given the rapid expansion of visual social media sites like Instagram and TikTok. Make sure to provide a clear, succinct message about your company while also engaging your audience through social media storytelling.
7. Flexibility
Any marketing position requires flexibility, but managing social media channels requires it even more. Being adaptive is a must in the rapidly changing social media arena.
Simply being able to schedule postings is insufficient. You must have the flexibility to test out new features and switch things around in response to trends, ongoing testing, and analytics that you should be performing on your postings.
To make your social media perform best for you after you have the metrics in front of you, you also need the freedom to test new ideas. You may easily ascertain which types of images and copy are effective for your business by using A/B testing (writing posts in various ways, with various images).