Top 15 Skills Every Social Media Manager Must Have

Nobody would have thought a decade ago that a social media manager would one day be the most important job in every company.

The significance of this role is evident from the fact that it involves planning, measuring, strategizing, executing, reevaluating, reporting – and repeating the same thing all over again for yet another campaign.

Regardless of the fact as to how diverse this job is, you need to stay up-to-date, frequently learn, and most importantly keep monitoring what’s important for your brand as well as audience.

Why is a Social Media Manager so important for companies?

The reason why a social media manager is so important for the companies is just because he can be a marketer, a strategist, an analyst, a copywriter, a designer and also a customer service representative and the crucial part is that you need to perform all these tasks in one day.

A successful social media pro makes the most of hard and soft skills that he/she excels after taking a long time and effort. As far as hard skills such as data analysis and copywriting are concerned, they can be more conveniently studied and trained. On the other hand, soft skills like being organized and efficiently making connections may be more complex to learn, but are just as crucial.

Top 15 skills you need to have in your resume

The reason why a social media manager is such a rewarding and challenging job is just because you are never done learning. You have to constantly refine as well as skillfully develop all the necessary skills required to continue advancing in your career. The more you try to focus on cultivating these skills, the more you’ll be able to efficiently drive results, effectively realize true business impact and also level up your own abilities as a professional social media manager.

Here are the top 15 skills that a social media manager needs to ace his/her career:

1. Communication

The most important thing to keep in mind is that social media is a communication platform and that is why it is more crucial to have strong communication skills if you want to be a true social media professional.
It’s more than necessary to have strong communication skills that can easily flex to fit any kind of platform, media, character count or any kind of audience.
The most important role of a social media manager is to be the voice of the brand for customers on social media and that is why, you should be able to drop what you’re doing at the moment to hop on efficiently on a trending topic or expertly handle a disgruntled customer complaint.
Besides, you would also have to effectively communicate with your boss as well as peers and collaborators across teams.

2. Creativity

Creativity lies at the centre of a social media manager job description as differentiation is one of the most unique challenges for brands in the saturated social media space.
Every social media manager needs to expertly create content that’s interesting, valuable and also buzz-worthy, however it takes lots of creativity to bring out the best ideas that stand out from the rest.
While we talk about social media skills, creativity needs to be particularly versatile.
Creativity efficiently helps social media managers to develop and expertly execute innovative, risk-taking social campaigns.
In addition, a creative social media manager will efficiently create visually appealing multimedia content to woo audiences at large.

3. Copywriting

Copywriting is also one of the most fundamental skills that a social media manager needs to ace his career.
It is pertinent to mention that writing good copy is needed in many areas of a social media manager’s job role whether it is filling up the company’s social media profile description or expertly crafting tweets as well as Facebook posts.
In order to drive engagement and clicks, you should ideally fit an enticing story into a social media post and which can be very much difficult without extraordinary copywriting skills.
As far as polishing your copywriting skills are concerned, it is highly recommended to study a few copywriting formulas to effectively help you craft an inspiring copy.

4. Editing

You couldn’t agree more to the fact that if there’s anything that would offend you as a social pro, it’s typos.
Having frequent typos or poor grammar is without any doubt a horrible way to hurt a brand’s reputation online, and that is why, social media users will rapidly point out flaws.
If you are having good attention to each and every specific, this will clearly mean that social mea managers will first spot spelling or grammar errors prior to posting.

5. Design

Research has revealed that social media posts with fascinating images receive more and more engagement and as many as 43 percent of consumers love to see more videos content in the future.
While keeping in view that visuals play a crucial role in social media (especially on platforms such as Instagram), social media managers must have the ability to expertly judge between good and bad design.
It is also pertinent to mention that a social media manager shouldn’t need to be graphic designers themselves, however having a discerning eye and being fully aware of photo editing trends will undoubtedly make it easier when efficiently working with designers and also giving constructive feedback.

6. Customer Care

Customer care is an amazing social media skill that joins together customer service, people skills and also an eye for uncovering opportunities.
It stands true beyond the shadow of doubt that developing a social customer care strategy is a basic part of being a social media manager.
You will be amazed to know that as many as 33% of consumers prefer to reach out to the kind of brands on social media with a professional customer service issue or question.
Not only will you have to carefully listen to and comprehend the concerns, demands and also admire current customers, but you also need to be practical about what future customers have to say.

7. Public Speaking

With wondrous features and apps such as Facebook Live, Instagram Live, and Periscope, live videos have undoubtedly become more and more crucial on social platforms.
That is why; marketers have carefully noted this change, with as many as 42 percent of marketers are of the opinion that they want to create more live videos.
The reason why Facebook Live videos are more effective is just because they are more likely to appear higher in the News Feed when those awesome videos are live as compared to when they are no longer live.
While keeping from an engagement perspective, live content also offers opportunities for high-engagement and most importantly direct interactions with audiences.

8. Keeping up with pop culture and current trends

Whether it is memes or any kind of trends, social media is wholly and solely built upon pop culture and ongoing happenings. This is more relevant in the case of platforms such as TikTok.

It is worth mentioning here that social media pros always have their finger on the pulse as to what’s happening right now, not only to jump on brand-related real-time opportunities, but also to know even better when to stop social media posts due to main global events.

9. Project Management

Being multi-task professionals, social media managers should excel good project management skills. They must have to create publishing schedules, properly track contacts, and also maintain social media profiles.
Besides, they will also need to run reports, keep up with designers and writers, expertly manage ad budgets, and also much more.
Besides, with strong project management skills, it is more likely that the best social media managers will be on top of all tasks while knowing when content needs to be published.

10. Organization

While talking about managing a content calendar, a need is felt to look for a lot of pieces that can change. If you are posting on a daily basis, it will clearly mean working at a fast speed, with lots to keep track.
While keeping the aforementioned fact in view, it is necessary to opt for post scheduling as it can be a time-saving feature for most of the social pros.
Social media managers must also be highly organized to make sure that assets are delivered timely, on brand, and most importantly approved by all stakeholders.

11. Data Analysis

While the majority of the social media pros rock at being exceptionally creative, they must also take any kind of risk when it comes to working with numbers.
Social media platforms offer plenty of data and therefore it’s crucial to be able to efficiently wade through plenty of data and find the most meaningful points that can easily lead to actionable insights.
It is worth mentioning here that understanding basic Excel skills ideally helps social media managers to professionally extract as well as manipulate data without any need to rely on others.

12. Budgeting

As a professional social media manager, you will most likely be allocated a budget to work with. Apart from any kind of paid advertising, you should have to pay for stuff like a social media management tool, designs, images, and most importantly courses to improve yourself.
Having some ideal financial and budgeting knowledge can easily ensure you get better on the job.
As far as budgeting is concerned, it is not necessary that you should be an Excel expert, but understanding what you can do with it can be of so much importance.

13. Handling pressure

It is not that simple to expertly manage a business’ social media channels as it definitely means the voice of a brand. This is a huge responsibility to take on regardless of the fact as to how big or small the brand is.
While keeping in view the aforementioned fact in view, it is necessary that social media managers must be able to expertly handle any kind of pressure.

14. Marketing

Regardless of the fact that you’re using social media as a tool, it is still relevant that you’re still marketing.
This clearly means that marketing is a must-have social media skill which you need a solid understanding of basic marketing principles.
Besides, the most important part is that you don’t need a marketing degree, but instead good foundational knowledge as to how marketing works.

15. Business Savviness

Being professionally able to produce likes and shares is ideal; understanding how social media ideally fits in with the entire business strategy is even better.

As far as a business-savvy social media manager is concerned, he/she will see the clear picture and better understand the expert role of social media in an organization.

Also, an expert social media manager better understands which metrics are highly relevant and significant to the business and how social media can easily help to push them higher.

Wrapping Up

You need to keep in mind that it is not necessary to be proficient in each and every of the aforementioned skills but rather being good at a few of them would undoubtedly make you a kind of social media manager that can truly be a valuable asset for any organization.