Essential Skills A Social Media Manager Must Have

There is an increasing number of people who want to become Digital Marketers, or just pretty much Social media managers. That’s a great phenomenon… But you don’t have to be completely unaware of the skills you would need. I will instruct on 6 essential skills a social media manager must have in this blog post, from my insight into the world of digital marketing as a practising professional.

It gets interesting every day as more people find their career paths in the social media marketing and management space. In a totally competitive digital space, no brand would want to take chances with their social media engagement/management.

Therefore, social media managers have become inevitable in the social space. However, brands do not need just any social media manager; they need skilled social media managers!

As a budding social media manager, these are the skills you would need to be completely ready to anchor the social media presence of any brand…

 

1. Photo Editing / Graphic Designing

This skill is a very important asset for any social media manager. The social media world is a very visual world.

Most of the social media platforms that currently have the larger number of users are more visually inclined.

The copy of any graphic is important, but not as important as the graphic content itself. Moreover, these major social media platforms have been able to determine from metrics generally that posts with a picture garner more engagements than posts without a picture.

However, you don’t have to be a graphic design guru before you can do some great designs. There are platforms like Canva that make it very easy to do designs for different purposes. For the most part, all you need to have is a good eye for design.

 

2. Reading Analytics and Reporting

This is probably the next important and definitely required skill any upright social media manager should have. Analytics gives insight into the existing trend of a brand’s online/social media performance.

With the analytics information, a good social media manager should be able to determine what is working or what would work. A manager would be able to creatively craft a calendar based on analytics.  A manager would also be able to determine the best time to post and many more…

Analytics are meant to be studied so as to inform the decision-making process. I guess you understand why that’s quite an important aspect of a social media manager’s work.

On the other hand, a proper reporting pattern and layout helps the manager present results in a clear and understandable way. It’s one thing to have achieved some desired results while managing a brand’s page, it’s another to be able to show those results to your client through reporting.

There are online tools you can use to measure your achievements, and some of them even have the reports automatically prepared for you. So, you wouldn’t have to bother yourself with trying to display your results perfectly.

However, if you would like to do this manually, there are templates that you can download online from platforms like – Smartsheet. They provide you with free templates you can adopt to present your results in beautiful and articulative ways.

 

3. Content Writing and Editing

Post copies matter on social media. One of the headaches a social media manager might have sometimes is being able to attach the right caption to a post.

I would say; pure content is much easier to assemble than captions for a picture post. Whichever it is that you’re doing per time, it has to be great!

The content could be the entire post, especially for platforms like Medium, Facebook or Twitter… At other times, however, the content could be just the copy to a picture post. Whichever it is, your content writing skill has to be classic!

 

4. SEO (Search Engine optimisation)

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is quite a vast field of digital marketing as a whole. SEO for Social media particularly is really essential.

For the most part, social media sites naturally have the ability to rank faster than individual web pages/sites.

A brand’s social media page would usually show up with a good ranking on Google’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ever before the individual sites show up when doing a branded search. This is because these social media sites already have good SEO ratings.

Therefore, it becomes imperative for social media managers to be able to harness the power of SEO using the right engaging content, related keyword, overall proper “about” section articulation and posting formats.

 

5. Basic Understanding of How Ads Run

Social media management cannot be separated from social media marketing. Ads are an important aspect of building a brand’s social media presence… therefore, they become a part of any social media manager’s responsibility.

Most of the major social media platforms have their different systems and Ad engines that allow marketers launch/tweak ads. It is necessary for managers to understand how these engines work.

The difference between high converting or high performing ads and the other end of the tail for ads is the thought process and strategy that put into it.

Therefore, it ought to go beyond the usual boosting of posts. It’s more about the ability to create ads that will outrightly perform well in tune to their CTAs (Call-To-Actions).

 

6. Healthy Conversational Approach

It might seem ridiculous to have listed this, but it’s become a very pivotal part of manager skills for anyone looking to manage the brand appearance of any organisation online.

There is literally a decline in the healthy conversations between brands and customers/fans online. There seems to be the cover of screens on both ends, and thus, respect is not accorded by brands (or you can as well say; social media managers) to their customers on social platforms.

Here is a golden rule that will guide any manager from going overboard, especially when dealing with difficult people online – “Never say online (using any brand’s page) what the brand wouldn’t say in person to any of their customers!”

 

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If you’d love to know more about our Professional training for Social Media Managers, follow here to inquire about our training service at Big Field Digital.