What Are The Skills Needed To Be a Social Media Manager?

Welcome to The Social Lab! This blog will not only help you navigate your personal social media, but also investigate marketing trends and examples of great social media work. Do you have something we should talk about? Make sure to send us an email or contact us on social media.

Becoming a social media manager for a company can be confusing, difficult, and competitive. The social media field as a whole continues to boom, which means that more and more people are vying for jobs in a market that is quickly becoming saturated. So what can you do to make yourself stand out? Here are multiple skills/traits that every social media manager should have.

Copywriting

One of the most important skills any social media manager can have is writing and grammatical talent. While some brands may focus less on spelling and more on style or flair, without a great understanding of copywriting, you will really struggle to make high-quality posts. Not only does a social media manager help create posts or at least oversee the creation of them, but they also communicate a lot with upper management from different companies. If you can't create well-crafted emails then you will struggle as a social media manager. There may also be clients that ask for advice regarding blog posts and SEO. This is just another aspect of the job where copywriting skills are a necessity. How can you improve this skill? Review all of your past, current, and future posts for grammatical errors and continue to make sure that your posts work well with the brand voice. Reading is another way to improve your skillset.

Analytics

We can't tell you how many people we have met that have a wonderful ability to create content that resonates with the target audience, but have absolutely no idea how to measure the success of their work. Analytics and statistics are the one skill on this blog that will put you above your competition more than anything else, simply because the social media field needs more analytical understanding. Understanding how to forecast future KPIs, creating trendlines and regressions, and having a deep understanding of how social media efforts affected sales within a company will give you a huge advantage when it comes to applying for a job or wooing a lead. How can you improve these skills? Think about how you are currently measuring your efforts and really dive into the analytics found on Facebook, Google, and other social media platforms.

Organization and Communication

When you are a social media manager, you have to be able to juggle numerous tasks at once. It is possible you will have interns or assistants, which means that you need to quality control their work while also completing your own tasks. Constant communication between you and your clients and the people on your team are a must. Along with leadership skills, you may also be required to create a content calendar, client brief, and/or a social media strategy guide for a business. The goal here is to understand how to complete your tasks so well, that you can teach them to others, which then allows the social media manager to focus more on client-facing tasks such as weekly meetings and also analytical tasks that ensure businesses understand your worth.

Patience and Empathy

As a manager, you will be dealing with difficult businesses and clients on multiple occasions. Sometimes the client has expectations that are unrealistic or want complete control over everything you as a manager are doing. The key here is to have patience, empathy, and strong communication skills to overcome the frustration of working with someone that is constantly flashing a light on you. Just like anything in life, it's important to try to place yourself in their shoes and understand the stress they are going through. Many times you are coordinating with an individual that has their own bosses that are nagging them on a daily basis. If you have empathy, you will avoid becoming burnt out and unwilling to create the best work possible.

Conclusion

Being a social media manager isn't easy, but once you really master the skills above, you will find your work much more enjoyable and rewarding. What other skills do you think are necessary in this field? Shoot us an email or comment below.