Social media managers have to juggle a lot of balls at once, their personalities tend to be creative, curious, outgoing and organized. A day in the life of a social media manager will include curating content, creating custom content, writing posts, answering comments and doing a lot of forward-thinking planning. If you’re looking to outsource your daily social media tasks, here are 5 of the top skills that bring the most to the table for online marketing and branding on social media.
#1. Copywriting - Many people might fail to realize how important copywriting is for social media managers, but think about it, your ability to captivate your audience in just a few short lines of text means everything. In a post you have an extremely small space to get your message across using a combination of visuals and text. You need to be able to hook a reader plus move them to active with, at most, two sentences. This kind of condensed writing takes special skills and practice.
#2. Visual Designs & Video - Visuals are highly important on social media. Your social media manager has to have a good eye for design so they share the right content that gets attention online. Not all social media managers are graphic designers but they should have some basic skills that allow them to create branded content using free and paid tools. Basic video editing skills are another great resource to have since video is increasingly popular.
#3. Community Engagement / PR - Your social media manager acts as the voice of your company online. They need to have excellent communication skills and the ability to mimic the sound and feel of your brand when writing copy or responding to comments from the community.
#4. Consumer Behavior Psychology - The more you know about how a buyer thinks, the easier it will be to gain their trust and loyalty. Consumer behavior psychology involves learning what triggers a buyer to take action. Triggers can be visual, emotional, need-based or even nostalgic. There are tons of books, courses and other materials dedicated to consumer psychology that you can learn from.
#5. Analytic Thinking - Aside from the many creative skills a social media manager needs to be successful, there is another more logical side of digital marketing that drives success and that is research and analytics. Your social media manager will need to be watching the analytic data for each platform and make adjustments accordingly. Analytics can help you learn more about your audience such as what types of posts speak to them, what time of day they are likely to be online and more. Using analytic data to improve your social media engagement is a key skill for any social media manager today.