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A social media manager for small businesses may need to be a marketer, strategist, copywriter, designer, analyst and customer service rep—sometimes all in one day.
Managing all of these diverse responsibilities requires social media experts to develop a number of crucial marketing and marketing-adjacent social media skills. An effective social media pro brings both hard skills, like data analysis, and soft skills, like organization and networking.
One of the most rewarding and challenging things about working in social is that you’re never done learning. You have to constantly refine and develop all nine of the social media skills below to continue advancing in your career. The more you focus on cultivating these skills, the more you’ll be able to drive results, realize true business impact and level up your own abilities as a social pro.
Communication
At its core, social media is a communication platform—so as a social media professional, it’s important to have strong communication skills that can flex to fit any platform, media, character count or audience. When choosing a professional in the affordable social media marketing field, make sure this person has excellent communication skills or risk certain doom.
As the voice of your brand for customers on social, you have to be able to drop what you’re doing at a moment’s notice to hop on a trending topic or handle a disgruntled customer complaint. And you aren’t only communicating in writing; you’re also using emojis, video, GIFs, pictures, stickers and other social media marketing services at your disposal to get your message across in a clear and engaging way.
Internally, this person also has to be able to effectively communicate with your boss, peers and collaborators across teams. It’s particularly important that you can speak to any internal stakeholder about your social media strategy, content distribution plan and impact of your work. The ability to explain how your work on social moves the business forward is one of the most important skills any social media professional can develop.
Last but not least, strong communication skills are key to developing internal education and training. While your social media team might lead the charge for your company’s social media marketing efforts, you can also work to train people from departments like customer support, sales and creative to support—and use—social in their own roles.
Writing
While there are many skills that can help get your message across on social, the core of communication always comes back to the written word.
The best experts that offer affordable social media management are excellent copywriters and sparkling digital conversationalists who not only embody, but enhance, their brand’s voice on social. From attention-grabbing ad copy to witty social banter, you should know how to write concise copy that elicits emotion from your audience.
Effective writers also know how to tailor their writing for different audiences and platforms. For example, while you can use up to 2,200 characters in your Instagram captions, data has shown that the most engaging length for Instagram captions is between 138–150 characters.
Creativity
Differentiation is one of the biggest challenges for brands in the saturated social media space. Every business owner wants to create content that’s exciting, valuable and buzz-worthy, but it takes creativity to come up with ideas that stand out.
When it comes to social media skills, creativity is particularly versatile. Creativity helps your business:
Develop innovative, risk-taking social campaigns
Create visually appealing, multimedia content
Consider every aesthetic detail of a social post, from images to links to formatting of copy
Lead productive brainstorms that bring out their teammates’ best ideas
Hone and expand their brand’s voice and persona
Efficiency & top-notch organization
You can’t manage a social media strategy without managing your time wisely, making efficiency and organization two necessary social media skills.
Your expert needs to conceptualize campaigns and distribution rhythms, and also have to lead and execute these plans from start to finish. To do this at scale, a skilled social pro will implement tools, policies and processes for their social presence to keep all of the moving pieces straight. Using a social media calendar is one of the best ways to keep content organized and plan ahead.
Resources to improve efficiency & organization
Pomodoro Technique and time-boxing: You can agonize over the perfect copy all day…but sometimes you’ve got 50 messages to write and schedule standing between you and your weekend. Setting aside a limited block of time to work on a task helps me keep things moving.
Prioritizing by value: Sometimes everything about social feels urgent—but you have to start with what’s most valuable. Here, our CEO explains his process for prioritization.
Customer care
Customer care is a social media skill that combines customer service, people skills and an eye for uncovering opportunities. Developing a social customer care strategy is an integral part of being a social media manager.
The person running your social network is your brand’s biggest champion. Understanding customer care enables you to make a positive impact in the hearts and minds of your community. Personalizing your interactions by referencing conversation history can help take an everyday interaction and turn it into an extra special moment.
Making connections
One of the core tenets of social media is being inherently social. This means that establishing and building digital relationships is still a core aspect.
That said, everyone has a different comfort and skill level when it comes to connection and engagement. As a social media manager, get comfortable experimenting, honing your brand voice and understanding the landscape of how playful or risk-taking you can be. What worked for Wendy’s in their now-legendary #NuggsForCarter exchange isn’t going to work for every brand, and that’s ok.
Agility
As we all know, the social landscape moves fast and even the best laid plans can quickly become irrelevant.
The ability to quickly pivot and react to a new trend, opportunity or crisis is an indispensable social media skill. In the everyday, being agile and flexible can help you decisively respond to a frustrated customer (or an appreciative superfan) in equally empathetic and personalized ways.
It’s also important to be agile when it comes to your long-term strategy. Social strategies have to be as dynamic and flexible as the platforms they rely on. It’s important to experiment with different tactics, or even shake up your strategy entirely, to adapt to new trends, to incorporate business changes or to bounce back from subpar results.
Data analysis
We’re all familiar with end-of-month reporting, but as part of social media management services, managers are looking at data and turning it into action more regularly than once a month.
If you are looking for a social media management company or a marketing agency, The PM Agency has a package for you. We specialize in small businesses who are looking to get established on social media.
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