Top 7 Skills Social Media Managers Need to Have
Social media marketing is not a state of mind or a magic trick, you cannot become an SMM specialist by having 5,000 Facebook friends or speaking at a couple of conferences. You can become a professional only by mastering certain tools and constantly pumping out those skills.
The task of SMM managers
SMM specialists and their task areas are quite diverse. Some of them are engaged in brand development or promotion in social networks and campaigns. Some investigate trends. Some of them work with advertising and public relations. Some of SMM specialists perform tasks of a LinkedIn profile writer, who knows and shares knowledge to succeed in this social media network.
If you are an SMM and do not know what to start with, here are the skills needed for building a prosperous career in this space.
Top 7 Skills of Social Media Managers
1) Analysis of competitors
Every day, hundreds of new projects appear in the social media environment. This development is caused by a low entry barrier and ease of configuration. Some of these projects fail, but a significant percentage succeed. The ones that show growth and dynamics have the ability to change the social picture of the region. The skills of SMM specialists help analyze the market and identify potential competitors in advance, as well as identify fast-growing topics that will be the next trend.
You can identify such topics using daily analytics of advertising exchanges for public goods and groups with the fastest growth rates of subscribers with minimum advertising costs.
2) Copywriting skills
An average SMM specialist creates up to twelve posts a day. Every writing style should differ depending on the social network. For example, Twitter needs a fun and entertaining tone, whereas LinkedIn is more professional. SEO can help too. Your posts should be acceptable to the audience of your brand and create a good attitude for it.
The most essential kinds of writing are:
- creating short and impactful headlines;
- eye-catching introductions;
- making a text simple (numbering and subtitles are vitally important).
3) Consistency of content
You may think that the whole purpose of using social media for business is to advertise various goods and services. This should certainly be the main goal, but the situation is slightly different. Social media contributes to any business by delivering content to your target audience. This content will keep your consumer audience and not let them cross over to your competitors. If your community is just a stream of advertising messages, then most likely your registered user will soon just click on the “Unsubscribe” button.
Moreover, SMM managers have to understand how social media accounts work with others. You do not need to use one template for all accounts. If one content ideally suits one social network, it does not mean that it will perform well for another.
It is also necessary to understand what type of content will resonate with your target audience. And there is no single format of content for social media, so do not be afraid to adapt and experiment constantly. While some people respond better to video, others are more interested in text. Understanding your consumer audience is paramount.
4) Work with the negative
If your project has become popular and has collected a large audience for this segment, do not overestimate complete success. In any segment, there are those who will always be dissatisfied with something: the content, the work of the administration, or even the existence of your project. A professional should be able to work with the hard nuts and have the capability to crack them. Instead of banning everyone, conduct a constructive dialogue. The best specialists are able to automate the work, setting up spam filters and even creating bots to answer the most frequent subscriber questions.
SMM specialists should be polite and be able to correctly answer even the most unpredictable and indecent questions. If you have the above-mentioned skills, then you are most likely to be able to cope with this work.
5) Plan your activity
You should plan actions beforehand. Without a plan, it is very difficult to manage and create content for the community or an advertising campaign in social media. SMM experts should be able not only to compose content plans and rubrics, but also correctly allocate working time.
Posting services, like Smmplanner, SMMbox and CleverPub will help improve your efficiency. With their help, you can easily plan a publication release schedule.
6) Take advantage of targeting
A social network specialist always knows the target audience of the project he/she leads. This information helps you fine-tune targeting without spending the advertising budget. To avoid budget loss, it is recommended to set up several test advertising campaigns with different advertising messages and calls to action. Based on the results of testing, it is necessary to choose the advertisement with the best conversion rates and allocate the main advertising budget for it.
7) SEO knowledge
Although Search Engine Optimization is a separate department, it influences social media and content. SEO has a considerable impact on your social media strategy. By combining SMM with SEO you get bigger involvement and more prospective customers.
If you try to combine CEO and SMM ask yourself:
- Do you get the way social media exposure connects with the enhanced ranking of Search Engine Results Page?
- How are you going to promote content on social media?
- Are you aware of how driving traffic to your web page influences revenue?
No doubt, a qualified social media manager must obtain many skills, which will help him/her create a good strategy to attract many customers and carry out various tasks.
We hope you enjoyed the promoted post as much as we did!