Are you thinking of getting a social media marketing job but do not know how to go about it? Maybe you are a college student exploring different career options or a mid-career professional looking for a change of jobs. Whatever your motivation or circumstance, if landing a social media marketing job is your goal, this is the article for you.
The nature of jobs today has evolved. Twenty years ago, there was no title called “social media manager.” Fast forward to today, there is a rich job economy for people specializing in social media management.
With the popularity of social media platforms, companies realize that to succeed in a digital and increasingly global world, they need more than just a website or online store. They need to have a presence where their customer is, and that is the social media space.
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Companies can assign a social media role to an employee, but that will bring poor results. But how to become a social media marketer? They need an experienced social media manager or marketer who has proven skills, understands social media marketing trends and stats, and is trained to handle the responsibilities that come with the job.
If you love social media, there are various types of social media marketing jobs available. Some are even six-figure managerial positions. The average social media manager earns $55,199 in the United States.
In this article, we will share the various skills that every recruiter is looking for in a social media marketer and the responsibilities you will handle.
Let’s get started.
12 Essential Skills Needed for Social Media Marketing Jobs
The demand for social media marketers is growing exponentially, and you should know what skills are needed for marketing to be an expert. Over 1 billion people are using Youtube, over 2.45 billion are using Facebook, and hundreds of millions are using other social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, and others.
While companies are still trying to control your business’s social media space, new social media platforms like TikTok and Clubhouse come into the scene and have gained increased popularity among their target audience.
Source: MarketMotive
Companies know that if they get the right social media marketer with the right skills, they can increase their engagement, revenue and build a reputable brand image.
If you are considering a job in social media marketing, you do not necessarily need a certificate. What you need are these social media marketing skills to succeed in the social marketing world. Note that you can get some of these skills if not all from a reputable certification program.
Source: ClickThrough
Excellent Communication
The first skill you must possess as a social media marketer is communication. You need to be able to communicate your company’s message clearly to their customers in the social space. Without excellent communication skills, you cannot claim to be a social media marketer or manager.
You are going to be an official voice of the company, the one who posts content on behalf of the company on social media. You will also have to engage with its customers. Good communication skill is not negotiable, you need it to get a social media marketing job.
When companies interview for social media positions, they always check the candidates to see if they have excellent communication skills.
Creativity
Another important skill employers look for when hiring a social media marketer is creativity. You need to be creative to thrive in any social media marketing job. If your messages are too common or boring, you will quickly lose followers and fail to gain the engagement you need.
As a social media marketer, you have to keep your audience engaged and hooked with creative posts. Since you will be posting frequently for your company, you have to generate new and engaging ideas that can go viral and stir up responses from your audience.
If you can generate innovative campaigns and posts to stand apart from your competitors frequently, you will easily get a social media marketing job.
Writing Ability
The majority of social media posts are in the form of text. Images and videos also account for a large number of posts but in many cases, it is the job of the graphic designer or video experts to produce them.
With text, however, companies expect the suitable social media marketer candidate to have good writing skills. Knowledge of the ins and outs of the language is required but more important is the ability to communicate in a simple language your audience understands.
Social media marketing jobs require you to have the writing skills to write captivating headlines and text that will encourage viewers to click or take action.
Content Curation
Social media marketers need to have content curation skills. It is the basic requirement that every social media marketer should have.
Many companies are too busy to create a steady flow of content on social media platforms, which is why they hire social media marketers to do the task on their behalf.
A good social marketer should be familiar with what the company is all about, content sources, and audience preferences. You need to know when to share, how to share, and what to share.
Social media marketing is a serious job since you will be acting as the face of the company in its social spaces. Companies need to know they trust you to pass the right message that will build their brand image and engagement.
A great plus that can win you a social media marketing job is if you can create infographics, images, animations, and videos. You can use tools such as Intasize, Renderforest, and Canva to do this even with little design skills.
There are free ready-made templates you can edit on these applications and use to create engaging and attention-grabbing social media posts.
Project Management
A social media marketing job encompasses everything that has to do with the company’s social media. You need to create posts, schedule posts, track contracts, and engage with your audience.
You will also have to work with designers to create the right images, receive updates about the company regularly, run reports, manage budgets for ads, and much more. A social marketing job requires a great deal of multitasking.
To succeed as a social media marketer, you need to have a good command of project management and time management skills. You can have your own unique project management style, but the best social media marketers can multitask and carry out their responsibilities in an efficient manner so they do not suffer from burnout.
They know the best time to publish content that will attract massive engagement and have a system in place to keep track of all the different conversations going on across social media platforms.
There are project management and time management tools that social media marketers can use to maximize their productivity. They include Trello, Trello alternatives, and ZoomShift.
Willingness to Learn
The social media space is very dynamic and changes quickly. What used to be a trend can quickly become obsolete and replaced by another trend.
Companies want their social media marketers to be capable of passing various aptitude tests and to demonstrate the ability to learn and quickly adapt to social media changes and patterns, which may include undergoing psychometric tests.
For example, Twitter added Fleet to their platform which is similar to LinkedIn stories, WhatsApp Status, and Instagram Reels. Smart social media marketers will quickly adapt to this change and start producing content to add to Twitter Fleet while others are yet to even hear about the new feature.
The willingness to learn is one of the key requirements that can land you a social media marketing job. You cannot claim to be a social media marketer and you do not know about the latest social media platform sensation Clubhouse.
Some companies encourage employee training and development by bearing the cost of such programs.
Marketing
It is only natural for a social media marketing job to require marketing skills. Even though you have a command of social media tools that shows you key social media metrics, you need to understand general marketing principles.
Having a degree in marketing is a plus, it can get you more recognition for the social media marketing job but it is not necessary. If you can prove that you have a solid foundational knowledge of marketing and can help the business grow, you can get the job.
Flexibility
As a social media marketer, you need a high degree of flexibility to thrive in the social media space. Change is the only constant in the social media world. Trends, best practices, and patterns can easily change over time.
A social media marketer has to be able to adapt quickly to those changes and respond to them. The skill of flexibility is a must-have skill in the social media marketer’s war chest.
Strategic Thinking
Another essential skill needed to get a social media marketing job is strategic thinking. Many companies will check if you have this skill before giving you the job.
Beyond the glamour and fun that the role of a social media marketer looks like to the outside eye, there is a ton of strategic thinking that goes into the everyday job detail.
Strategic thinking is a skill that can be learned from a certification program or from reading books and consuming resources. However, if you already have a natural aptitude for strategic thinking, it will be easy for you to manage the company’s social marketing needs.
Relationship Building
Another important skill that social media marketers needs is relationship-building skills. They have to interact with other departments in the company such as sales, marketing, and customer support teams.
Social media marketers also have to build relationships with influencers. They also have to work with graphic designers, freelancers, and other creatives.
Community Management
As a social media marketer or manager, one of the key tasks you will be assigned is to manage the company’s community or create one. If you do not have community management skills, you cannot be a successful social media marketer.
You have to build connections and relationships through your content to grow the business online community.
Analytical Skills
Analytical skills are a must-have for social media marketers. You need to evaluate the performance of your company’s social media accounts and find out why your marketing is producing or not producing results.
Every social media marketer should be familiar with social media metrics such as followers, new followers, impressions, views, and clicks. It is not enough to check social media metrics and reports, you should also have an analytic mind to make informed decisions from them.
The Responsibilities of a Social Media Marketer
What does a social media marketer do? How to get a job in social media marketing? A lot. They are in charge of the company’s social media but that description is vague and does not portray the massive responsibilities and duties that a social media marketer does daily.
Source: Digital School of Marketing
Here are some of the responsibilities of a social media marketer in no order of importance.
Choose What Social Networks to Use
Social media marketers are responsible for finding the best social media network where the company can best build and communicate with their audience.
There are a lot of social networks available in the market; all are good mediums for communicating with your audience but they have their different peculiarities. For example, Facebook is a social network for building a community. Pinterest and Instagram are good for visual content and Twitter is good for promoting content.
A good social media marketer will know what type of content to promote across the company’s various social media accounts.
Source: SmartInsights
Identify the Target Market
Another duty a social media marketer performs for a company is to find the company’s desired audience on social media. They have to identify which group of people are most likely to follow the company, engage with their content, and buy products from it.
This responsibility involves thorough research of hashtags and competitors to find information about the right target audience. Once the target audience has been identified, social media marketers use this knowledge to run more effective promotional content and campaigns.
Add Followers
Another essential responsibility on the shoulders of a social media marketer is to grow the company’s followers on its social media accounts.
To get followers, they must promote the right kind of content that provides rich value for the company’s chosen demography. You can use influencers in their niche to gain more brand awareness and grow followers.
Engage Followers
It is not just enough to add followers to your social media account, social media marketers also have to engage them to ensure that they do not unfollow your account.
The best way to do this is to keep posting content either in video, text, voice, or image form that incentivizes engagement from your followers. Keep posting rich content that offers value for your followers, and they will stay with you and even refer others to follow your social media accounts.
Social media marketers also face the difficult responsibility of managing negative complaints of customers. They have to provide answers to followers’ questions and juggle that with maintaining a positive brand image for the company.
Increase Site Traffic
Social media marketers are responsible for increasing the company’s social shares and traffic from social media networks. They post content such as photos, promotions, deals, and discounts to get followers to click on links that direct them to the company’s website.
The primary goal of engaging followers and growing their numbers is to have a ready base to sell the company’s products and services. People will buy more from a company that they have an active or strong relationship with.
Social media marketers use clever social media posts and promotions to incentivize followers and views to visit their company’s websites or stores.
Track Results
Another key responsibility of a social media marketer is to regularly track the results from your social media campaigns. Tracking the various social media metrics will help you identify if your strategies are working or not.
Tracking results is an essential part of running a successful social media promotion or campaign. You get to see if there is a problem with your social media campaign and make corrections.
Source: Ascend2
Next Step: Winning the Social Media Marketing Job
Getting a social media marketing job in today’s world is relatively easy. You do not need a lot of fancy certifications, what you need is to demonstrate that you have what it takes to do it.
Every company needs to have a social media presence, even startups still trying to find product-market fit. But most companies don’t have the talent and time to manage social media effectively. An inactive social media account will bring zero benefits for companies. That’s your angle. Find companies that are feeling the pain of poor social media marketing and get your foot in the doro.
And because companies need to stay relevant in the social media space, the demand for social media marketers is growing rapidly.
The social media marketing skills include excellent communication, writing skills, creativity, project management, community management, relationship building, and analytical skills.
Some of the responsibilities that come with the job include growing followers count, engaging followers, and increasing site traffic.
If you have the skills to be a social media marketer and can handle the huge responsibilities that come with the role, you will get a social media marketing job.
Your capabilities and understanding of the responsibilities involved will pave the way for a successful career as a social media marketer.