10 Social Media Management Skills To Improve Your Career
Kristyn Miller
Table of Contents
If you’re looking to get ahead in your marketing career, social media management skills are a must. It’s no secret that social media is the best way to stay connected with customers and promote your brand. The use of social media has seemingly taken over every aspect of life, and the marketing world is no exception. From posting to Facebook to posting to Instagram to posting to Twitter, marketers are using various platforms to find new customers, grow their businesses, and increase their revenue.
Unfortunately, with so many new social media platforms and social media tools for business available, it can be hard for a social media marketer to keep up. Nearly 4 billion people actively use social media worldwide, with hundreds of platforms to choose from. So how does one make their voice —or brand, rather— heard?
Don’t worry! We’ve got you covered.
Below, we’ll provide you with 10 important skills for how to become a social media manager.
Communication Skills
Let’s start with the basics. Social media is all about communication. What once began as merely friend-to-friend communication has since grown into communication between celebrities and fans, politicians and citizens, and yes, even brands and their customers.
Finding your company’s voice and then using that voice to engage your audience is a key aspect of how to be a social media manager.
Social Interaction
There are a number of things to consider when learning to master your communication skills. First and foremost, you must develop a knack for interacting socially with consumers. If you can’t, you may want to outsource social media efforts to someone who can.
After all, you are the voice of your brand. The way you interact with your customers sets the tone for how your company or business is perceived. Whether it be contributing to a trending topic or handling a customer complaint, you must be ready to adjust your tone accordingly while still maintaining a coherent voice for your brand.
The way we interact with others is an invaluable insight into the human condition. Social media exposes all of our thoughts and feelings, which means that for any business or organization, it should be at the forefront of your mind when trying to accomplish social goals. Being aware of how customers think will make for a more successful customer experience and sales strategy.
Internal Interaction
When it comes to communication, it doesn’t begin and end with you and the customers. Communication must take place internally, as well. This means that interaction between your coworkers and collaborators is just as important as interaction with your audience.
Communication among team members is the key to internal training and education. You may appear to be the voice of your brand to customers, but you know as well as anyone that there are several working parts that go into it. It is crucial that you and your team are all on the same page in order to maintain the image and integrity of your brand.
It is also especially important that you effectively communicate your strategy with internal stakeholders. They are hiring you because they want to promote their brand and grow their business. You need to be able to explain to them exactly how you plan to do so.
A social media kit and social marketing planner can help with this!
Connection Making Skills
With social interaction comes the need to make positive connections amongst your audience. Establishing and maintaining digital relationships is an important part of a social media manager’s job.
Believe it or not, customers want to feel connected to the brands from which they are buying (or thinking of buying).
Successful social media engagement depends on how well a brand is able to identify, understand, and communicate with its target audience.
When it comes to connection making, understanding a customer’s habits will always be an important part of that. Effectively meeting consumers where they are in the ever-shifting landscape of social media requires you to learn more about them and their habits so that you can provide them with the information they want most from your company.
This means developing a sense of acute awareness through observation. Being aware of what it is your audience wants and how they want it delivered is essential to the success of your social media strategy.
With this in mind, it’s also important that you remain politically correct. This means being sensitive to the things you post and the way in which you talk and connect with others. Once again, and we can’t stress this enough, the way you communicate on social media is a direct reflection of the brand you are representing.
We’ve all seen the ghastly effects of “cancel culture” and what it can do to a person or entity. One wrong move can seemingly nip an entire business in the bud.
Writing Skills
We talked a lot about the importance of communication, and at the core of communication is writing. The ability to write constructively goes hand in hand with the ability to communicate effectively. Whether you are writing ad copy, posting a status, scheduling a tweet, creating graphics, or engaging directly with a customer, you must know how to write a concise message that both embodies and enhances your brand.
The best social media managers understand how to properly tailor their writing to fit different audiences and platforms. For example, you might alter a post for Twitter to read more conversational, while a similar post on Facebook might come across as a bit more formal.
Likewise, you wouldn’t want to occupy the entire 2,200 character limit on an Instagram caption, as your target audience more than likely won’t want to read all of that. After all, they’re probably on Instagram because they want to look at pictures, not read an entire article.
Being able to understand the needs and wants of a specific group of people is an important skill, but being able to articulate in a way that captures their attention is even more so.
Use this to your advantage when creating your social media manager contract and negotiating your social media marketing salary!
Organizational Skills
As a social media strategist, your job entails more than just conceptualizing ideas for your campaign. It also includes distributing them to the public in an appealing and organized manner. For example, neither spam posts nor irregular posts are a good look for your brand.
The best way to create a regularly occurring and organized social media feed is to keep a social media content calendar and implement scheduled posts.
Lucky for you, we can help with just that. Kiopi is a tool specifically designed for maintaining organization in your social media presence by scheduling your social posts. That way, you are able to rest assured that your content will be exactly where it needs to be when it needs to be there.
Creativity
Another incredibly important aspect of the curation of your content is creativity. Essentially every brand has the similar goal of piquing people’s interest and getting them talking by use of creative marketing initiatives and social media advertising efforts. However, it’s not always easy when there’s so much competition from others with the same goal posting on the same platform.
So how do you stand out from the rest?
The key to creating innovative and captivating content lies in one’s ability to take risks. You want to create multimedia content that is both aesthetically appealing but has never been done before. This requires that you think outside of the box. Bouncing ideas off of other team members can be a good way to get the ball rolling.
Oh, and having a good sense of humor goes a long way in the world of social media. Keep that in mind.
Accuracy
Another necessary measure for how to be a social media manager is accuracy. Though a lot of what we see on social media is fake or untrue, you don’t want your brand to contribute to that statistic. People crave transparency, honesty, and TRUTH.
This means that if you’re going to be posting things like numerical statistics or celebrity quotes, or anything in between, do your fact-checking!
The internet can be a double-edged sword when it comes to researching. While there is a world of information right at your fingertips, there is also an endless amount of false information intermingled with it. This can sometimes make maintaining accuracy difficult, but nevertheless, it is certainly not impossible. Learning how to conduct thorough research is an important skill for a good social media strategist.
Marketing Skills
What you are doing by managing a social media account is, at its core, marketing. Marketing is defined as the promotion or selling of products and services, including market research and advertising. While you may not actually be selling the products or services yourself, you are selling the brand.
The way in which you do this has a direct correlation with the success of the business whose account you are managing.
Social media marketing is the source of invaluable business intelligence. The ability to develop a social strategy that supports and even enhances the overall business goal is the key to success. To do this, one must possess a broad understanding of both traditional and digital marketing approaches. This may include things such as email, SEO integration, lead generation, tech PR, event hosting, and more.
Efficiency and Dexterity
If you were not already aware, the social media landscape is constantly moving and changing. A strong social strategy from a year or two ago likely won’t cut it in today’s world.
A good social media manager must have efficiency and dexterity, meaning they are able to quickly think on their feet and keep up with the constant flow of social media trends.
The importance of such agility recently became increasingly apparent as the Coronavirus pandemic took over the world last year. Social media managers had to completely rework their strategies to adapt to this crisis. Whatever may have been working fine in February of 2020 suddenly became irrelevant by as soon as the end of March.
That is why it is crucial that as a social media strategist, you are able to adequately adjust your strategy at the drop of a hat.
Data Analysis Skills
When someone inquires about how to become a social media manager, they often don’t put much thought into the fact that it requires a lot of data analysis. Good social media managers regularly analyze the data they receive and turn that information into action.
When developing data analysis skills, you need to pay attention to not only quantitative data, but qualitative data. The number of people your content reaches is certainly important, but what is equally as important is that the content receives interactions and engagement. You don’t want your content to reach idle eyes; rather, you want it to leave an impression and encourage interaction between the brand and its consumers.
Pay attention to the metrics you receive in your data reports and use that to influence your strategy. If you notice certain content is doing really well, continue optimizing that sort of content while keeping it new and fresh.
On the other hand, if you notice that another type of content is not doing so well, learn from it and establish a different route. Kiopi’s social media analytics tool can work wonders in this aspect.
Customer Care
Last but certainly not least, a social media manager must be skilled in customer care. This means they are adept at customer service, possess good people skills, and have an eye for opportunity. With customer care comes the need to listen to the concerns, demands, and even praise of your consumers and show them that you understand.
Personalizing your interactions with customers is a good way to demonstrate that you are listening and that you care about what they have to say.
Understanding your customers’ needs allows you to make a positive impression both on them and your own brand. Good customer service and care are expected from your audience, and your ability to meet those expectations directly contributes to the success of your strategy and social media campaign management.
Kiopi Has You Covered
By now, we all know that social media management for small businesses and large businesses alike plays an integral part of marketing these days. With the fast-paced, ever-changing world of social media, it’s crucial that you stay on top of trends and maintain good social media management skills to incorporate into your strategies.
By mastering the aforementioned skills and integrating useful tools such as Kiopi, you’re sure to boost your business and significantly improve your career.
