Social media has become an integral part of businesses' marketing strategies, and social media managers are tasked with creating and implementing effective social media campaigns. To be a successful social media manager, you must possess a range of key skills, from social media strategy and content creation to communication and customer service. In this blog post, we will explore the top skills essential for a social media manager and how they can help you create engaging and effective social media campaigns that drive business results.
Attention to Detail
Having an eye for catching grammar mistakes and typos is very important when sharing content on multiple platforms. Your audience may be coming to you as a resource and expects a level of professionalism. Misspelled words and a watermark on your graphic can lower your credibility and distract your audience from your posting purpose.
Always have a second set of eyes on your content before posting. If you use a social media management software, you may have an approval feature so a teammate can review it. Having a document of all your caption copy to email to your coworker is also efficient.
How your content looks is just as important as the text that comes with it. Sometimes the text isn't aligned with other elements in your graphic, and it can be the only thing people focus on. You want to make sure it is simple enough for your audiences to understand and it's branded, so they know it's coming from you. Can you read it clearly? Is the text color too light? Is the logo too big or small? These are a few things to note before submitting your design for approval.
Content Creation and Strategy
This seems like a given, but you'd be surprised how often people say, "I don't know what to post!" You need to remind yourself who you are posting for and what your goals are in posting. A good chunk of my day is scrolling through social media feeds to see what's trending and how I can incorporate those into our content. Trends come and go, so it's best to get on it once you see it because people can be over it within a week. Instagram and TikTok have a feature where you can save videos on your profile and categorize them like Pinterest boards. I highly recommend always organizing your content like this to have ideas on file.
Keep in mind the platforms you're posting on. TikTok is more fun and entertaining, whereas LinkedIn is a place to share major updates and professional growth. That line is becoming more blurred than it was, but my rule of thumb is if people are getting on TikTok to laugh and be entertained, why would they want to see a video of someone in your company getting a promotion? Just because a post can be shared on one platform doesn't mean it needs to be shared everywhere. Diving into each platform to see what other organizations are posting can give you the feel of why people are interacting and following them to begin with.
Strong Written Skills
Have you ever had to write the same sentence five different ways? Sounds silly, right? This is pretty common in the social media world, rephrasing a post to satisfy your different audiences, so having strong and creative writing skills can heavily assist you in this. Handling different brands means having different voices, which means you need to be adaptable if you're writing a caption for a luxury perfume versus score results for a basketball team. The best way to strengthen these skills is to practice a variety of writing styles. Do your research on industries you'd like to work for and see how they created a voice for themselves.
This goes with attention to detail, but I also recommend investing in Grammarly premium; not only does it help you with grammar, but it helps create the voice you want. Whether that's being confident and informative or fun and witty. My favorite feature is when it makes my words short and concise, so I can get to the point and avoid fluff.
Understanding the Analytics
The content is posted; now what? When I tell this part to my non-marketing peeps, they never realize the back work that's put into social media! (Story of every social media manager's life.) Each social media platform provides analytics such as engagements (comments, likes, shares) or impressions (number of views your post received.) This data can help you understand what content is performing well with your audience and what's not. These numbers can help you decide what type of content should be pushed out more. Some numbers may not be as important to you, such as your number of followers. Again, go back to your social media goals and decide how to use this data to measure your success.
Customer Service
I'm not working in front of a cash register; why do I need this? Your followers are essentially your customers! More than ever, if anyone has a complaint or question about a product, they go straight to social media for an answer. Being respectful and timely of anyone's concerns about your brand is vital. A customer could direct message you with a question or make a post and tag you. Regardless of how they decide to reach you, it's best to acknowledge them, so they know you care about them, which builds trust and a strong relationship. When others witness this, you gain loyalty from your followers, and they'll vouch that you can handle any problems thrown at you.
These are just some skills I've found crucial in my social media career. Obtaining these skills can give you the confidence and innovation to create content for and drive success to your organization. There are more to list and others to discover, but I hope the ones I highlighted were informative and may have shocked you!
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