Like any senior marketing role, becoming a good Social Media Manager requires you to have a wide range of skills to create engaging social content that converts followers into loyal customers.
The role and skills of a Social Media Manager have evolved over the years to become more complex. LinkedIn’s ‘Future of Skills’ report found that Social Media Manager skills requirements have changed an average of 25 percent since 2015 in the United States.
Skills required in the role now include social media outreach, social customer service, platform expertise, and influencer marketing. While artificial intelligence has the opportunity to have an impact on the channel, through optimizing social listening and developing social content.
If you’re an aspiring Social Media Manager but aren’t sure where to start, this article will help you identify the essential skills to acquire and hone for a successful career in social media management.
In this blog, we will cover:
- What is a Social Media Manager?
- What Does a Social Media Manager Do?
- What are the Tasks of a Social Media Manager?
- 9 Skills You Nedd to Be a Social Media Manager
What is a Social Media Manager?
A Social Media Manager is trusted with monitoring, executing, filtering, and measuring the social media presence of a product, brand, corporation, or even individual.
This role is often seen as the ‘voice of the company’ and may also be referred to as ‘Community Manager’ (although this title has become slightly outdated) or ‘Digital and Social Media Manager’.
What Does a Social Media Manager Do?
Social Media Managers create and maintain brand promotions, company information, and marketing campaigns for their company across several social media networks.
They also know the best social media metrics to focus on and use tools and respond to questions and comments according to the company’s voice and guidelines. Social Media Managers work daily to produce new content, constantly innovating to push new ideas and formats and measuring how well those ideas perform.
They may report to a Social Media Director (in larger organizations) or the Head of Content or brand and collaborate with other creative groups such as marketing and public relations, as well as the sales department to drive lead generation campaigns that convert into revenue. A key part of the role is to keep up with new trends along with company and industry news.
An in-demand role, Social Media Manager positions typically require a bachelor’s degree in marketing, public relations, or similar. According to Glassdoor, Social Media Managers earn an average salary of over $57,000 in the U.S.
Featured Resource: How To Become A Social Media Manager Free E-book
What are the tasks of a Social Media Manager?
The role is fast-paced and varied involving many tasks in the space of a day! Some of the tasks a Social Media Manager might do are:
- Create content for multiple platforms – The content you create for Facebook won’t necessarily work on TikTok. Look at what content will work for each platform based on trending content and look at what your competitors are posting e.g. video, gif, infographic, blog, etc.
- Monitor social analytics – Check what campaigns are working (or not working) across channels so your time and money are spent on the right channels and aimed at the right people.
- Devise a social network strategy – You may need to create a campaign from scratch to promote a sale or new product.
- Measure and prove ROI – Set measurable goals for a new campaign across relevant channels and create a report to track performance. Use a social media campaign calculator to meet your objectives at the right cost.
- Schedule social posts – Each platform has an ‘ideal’ time to post content (Instagram users seem to be busiest on Wednesday mornings!). Scheduling ahead of time helps reduce workloads and ensure content is posted when you’re asleep, but your audience isn’t.
- Find relevant curated content – Some of your social posts should reflect world events or developments that matter to your audience. Do some research and share third-party content that will resonate.
- Engage with your audience – The point of your social media is to build engagement. So, respond to any comments and deal with customer queries. In other words, use your social media channels as a customer service channel.
- Review and populate your content calendar – In such a fast-paced world, you need to plan your content. Populate your social media calendar for days or even weeks ahead to stay on top of things.
These are just a few examples of tasks that you may need to do. But remember, each day can be different, so keeping on top of your content calendar and social campaigns is crucial to online success.
9 Skills You Need to be a Great Social Media Manager
Now that you know what the role involves, let’s look at what skills a Social Media Manager should have.
