Today, if a brand doesn’t exist on social media, they are not represented online. Ignoring social media means losing your opportunity for interaction with customers, thought leaders, and tastemakers, which costs you engagement and web traffic as a whole.
According to Hubspot, in 2014 92% of marketers claimed that social media marketing was important for their business. 80% of the marketers indicated that their efforts increased traffic to their website.
According to the Social Media Examiner, 97% of marketers are currently participating in social media. However, 85% of these marketers aren’t sure as to which social media tools are the best to use.
According to a Morrison Foerster Infographic, B2B marketers in US alone are projected to spend more than $100 billion on social media advertising by 2017. In 2014, the US spending on social media marketing was $7.52 billion. The Infographic also shows that 66% of companies have dedicated social media teams.
The State of Social Marketing, 2015 Report states that Social media marketing will account for 22.5% of marketing budgets within the next 5 years. Of all the major social networks, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have the highest adoption rate. YouTube is used by 100% of the top brands, with Twitter and Facebook close behind. The younger networks like Instagram and Pinterest are gaining steam.
With social media becoming a top priority for companies and organizations around the world, the need for social media marketers is on the rise.
So, what are the important skills to have as a social media marketer?
#1 Creativity –
The one most important aspect of social media marketing is creativity. A study shows 21% of social media usersun-follow a brand if the content shared is repetitive or boring. To keep followers engaged and hooked, marketers will need to consistently come up with new and engaging ideas, creative initiatives, and campaigns. From Facebook contest to viral videos, social media marketers will need to think of innovative ways to stand apart from the millions of others on social media.
#2 Content curation –
Content curation has always been a major part of social media marketing – primarily for those businesses who do not have the time to create a steady flow of content on their own.
Content curation stands as the next important skill for a social media marketer since they will need to know when to share what and how. The content will need to be tailored to the audience’s liking withinformation that they will be interested in and in a style and format they will respond to.
#3 Writing –
Creating the next post on Facebook to crafting the perfect Tweet, writing stands as an essential part of a social media marketer’s job profile. If headlines aren’t magnetic or captivating enough, people are not going to be motivated enough to click.
Crafting a tweet or writing a blog post is very different from writing a college essay or newspaper column. Social media marketers need to be able to write web content that is easy to skim through and is visually appealing with headlines, shorter paragraphs, and bullets.
#4 Organization –
Social media marketers need to be able to create publishing schedules, track all contacts, and maintain the social media profiles which will require some level of organization. The best social media managers always know when content needs to be published, the specials to plan ahead for, and to keep track of all the different social media conversations that are going on.
#5 Ability to learn about new technology quickly –
New social media platforms are constantly popping up. It isn’t necessary that a brand is active on them but if your audience starts migrating or gravitating towards these new platforms then so will you. You will need to quickly update yourself on these new platforms.
#6 Relationship Building –
Apart from connecting with the audience, brands also need to reach out to influencers, making relationship building a crucial skill to develop. Unfortunately, this is one skill that a lot of companies are short on which is resulting in spam-like, direct messages on Twitter and Instagram comments begging for followers.
#7 Community Management –
Taking a closer look at the brands with social media presence, they all have one thing in common – community. Social media marketing is all about communicating with your audience. Once you are able to build a connection and grow a community, the audience will start creating user-generated content (UGC) and your reach will spread organically.
#8 Sales –
Sales as a skill can be slightly tricky. You do not want to seem too pushy as a salesperson but you also want to avoid losing out on potential leads by being too passive. You can, however, strike a balance by using a few sales techniques that translate well into social media marketing.
For example, sales professionals have been trained to find a customer’s pain point and demonstrate how their product can provide a solution. Why do people use social media? Often to express their problems and frustrations. Finding users and reaching out to them can help you bring them into the sales funnel and generate leads.
#9 Analytical skills –
What if someone came up to you and asked if your social media strategy is working for your business? A good social media marketer will have the answer to this. In fact, not just the answer but also provide data to prove it.
Earlier options for tracking on social media marketing were limited. But today social media tools provide plenty of data to improve social media marketing efforts and make informed decisions instead of relying on assumptions.
So, there you have it – the most important skills a social media marketer should have.
Digital Marketing is one of the industries to be in now. With the rate at which companies are turning to this industry, there is bound to be a skills-gap.
Take a leap. Get into this fast-paced, thrilling industry.
Earn a certification and get ahead.
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