Social Media

How Can You Evolve Your Skills As a Social Media Manager?

A social media manager has to be a marketer, copywriter, and customer service rep– and excel in all of them. Today social media managers are the linchpin of modern marketing and communications. The responsibilities go beyond scrolling through funny memes and posting content on the social handles, they are the architects of the brand’s online presence.

The social media management market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.2% from 2022 to 2027. In India, ad spending on social media is $0.97 billion and is expected to grow at a rate of 3.87% by 2027. Some of the top skills mentioned in marketing are Social Media skills, digital marketing skills, communication skills, marketing strategy skills and platform expertise such as Instagram, and LinkedIn are some of them.

So, whether you are planning to become a social media manager in, or want to sharpen your skills in 2023 and beyond, here are some of the skills in no particular order you need to thrive in social media marketing.

1. Communication

Of all social media skills, the one we believe has the strongest pursuit in thriving the hectic list as a social media manager is effective communication. The job entails creating briefs for internal teams, and for clients, to compile a social listening analysis for leadership. A social media manager has to communicate with a range of stakeholders from ideation, and content creation to posting it on socials.

For an effective communication, one must remember;

Audience engagement: An SMM has to communicate with the audience through comments, and DMs, on behalf of the brand or individual. For this, you need to employ a consistent brand voice when communicating with followers on social media. This holds for planned posts, moment marketing or handling customer complaints.
Internal Communication: Internal communication plays a huge role in the planning and execution of the content creation journey. Articulate your ideas and plans to decision-makers and cross-departmental partners. This could be for a content distribution plan with the account manager, and retrieving data and insights from the analytics team.

Resource Recommendations:

Books: How To Talk To Anyone, by Leil Lowndes; The Science of Effective Communication, by Ian Tuhovsky; Simply Said, by Jay Sullivan.
TED Talks on Communication

2. Copywriting

Social media managers must be excellent writers for writing copy that embodies the voice of the brand on social channels. From writing content captions to writing copy descriptions, good social media writing goes beyond textual grammar and spelling.

A social media manager must hone the skills for writing witty, attention-grabbing copy that speaks for the brand to the audience. No matter which social media platform your brand wants to focus on, effective writers know how to tailor the content that keeps the essence of the platform. For instance, in Instagram you can only write within 2,200 characters, however, most engaging descriptions have 5-60 characters. However, on LinkedIn, you can write 500-600 words, out of which posts with 100-200 words get the most attention.

If you don’t have writing experience or skills, that won’t mean you are unfit for the job role, as you can get help from AI-based content tools.

Resource Recommendation:

Books recommendation: The Copy Book, by D & AD; Faster, Smarter, Louder: Master Attention in a Noisy Digital Market by Aaron Agius and Gián Clancey; The Copywriter’s Handbook By Robert Bly
Tools Recommendation: Grammarly, Copymatic AI, Copy AI, Writer AI, Hemingway Editor

3. Tech-Savviness

Social Media platforms are always evolving, and with changes in algorithms, and features, it is important to stay ahead with new tools and features added to social platforms. Being tech-savvy will help you to stay ahead of the curve and make the most of the latest features and trends. Social media managers should be comfortable using scheduling tools, content management software, analytics platforms, and other social media management software.

A tech-savvy social media manager quickly adapts to new changes, maximising the use of the technology on the platform to enhance engagement and reach. As technology plays a key role in content creation, this includes graphic design, video editing, and content management. Having tech-savvy skills or the ability to explore emerging technologies can help in better management of time and resources.

Resource Recommendation:

Books Recommendation: “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook”, by Gary Vaynerchuk; “Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age” by Jonah Berger
Social Management Tools: Hootsuite, Buffer
Online Courses: Coursera, Udemy
Follow industry news, and updates from authoritative sources to remain updated.

4. Marketing Strategy

Social media marketing sits at the intersection of customer experiences, marketing and sales. According to reports and insights from industry experts such as Sprout Social, the social media team plays a key role in easing ROI, and we have to look at it more closely, we will learn this comes from formulating the right strategy.

For anyone trying for a job in a social media marketing company, it is important to have marketing acumen combined with social intelligence to understand the market trends and fill the gap. This helps in building successful marketing strategies, that are data-driven and customer-centric. To create impactful marketing strategies the marketing manager needs to integrate traditional and digital marketing approaches. This could mean your digital efforts intersect with omnichannel marketing such as emails, paid campaigns, Out-of-home (OOH) campaigns, and corporate events.

Resource Recommendation:

Books: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, and Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell.
Follow marketing influencers such as Adam Grant, Seth Godin, and Joe Pulizi for wisdom.
Courses: LinkedIn Learning Courses, Coursera, and any independent marketing course also work well.

5. Reporting

We all are familiar with month-end reporting, which is why a skilful social media manager who knows how to check the data and use it for optimising the results is important. Data analysis is even more important when it combines both quantitive and AI-enabled qualitative data which is derived from a range of tools, social listening, and sentiment analysis mined from comments and posts.

In social media marketing, you need to create a picture of the data, along with a representation of the “why” behind it. This also includes customer experience, graphs and engagement maps to share with stakeholders and cross-functional collaborators.

Resource Recommendations:

Tools: Hootsuite, Hubspot, Litmus, Zoho Social
Courses: Social media analytics, data analysis, data visualization from LinkedIn Learning, Facebook Analytics Academy, Google Analytics Academy that shows social media traffic.

Conclusion

Social media management is a career of life-long learning. Whether you are applying as a fresher, or as experienced. With the list of skills, you can find the organisation and company that takes you to the next door of your career. So, if you are phenomenal in understanding data, creating content, and ideating strategies based on business model and audience then you would make a great social media manager.

If you have all of these skills and want to join our team at PromotEdge, then connect with us.