A social media marketer’s job is anything but dull. Not only do you have to be a jack of all trades, but you have to adapt to the fickle whims of social media algorithms and current trends. It’s a responsible, stressful, yet rewarding job, as you get to shape people’s perceptions of your brand and contribute to its growing popularity.
Not sure which skills you should hone to become a stand-out social media marketer? Then this is the ideal article for you!
Knowing the Ins & Outs of Your Chosen Platform(s)
Your entire social media marketing strategy hinges on understanding the platform you’re creating it for. A firm grasp on specifics like the chief demographic, which type of content works best, and what advertising and analytics resources a given platform offers is key to long-term success.
You can get the basics down fast, but keeping up with trends never ends. You’ll want to engage with users, check out what the competition is doing, and observe how users of a particular platform react to events, campaigns, etc., to adapt accordingly.
Creativity
Social media marketers need a wide variety of content creation skills, which we’ll get to in a bit. However, polishing those won’t get you far if you don’t also develop your creativity. The average social media user sees between 50 and 400 ads each day. They understandably become desensitized and even annoyed, reducing their receptiveness to your content.
The answer? An original approach to social media presence that makes your brand instantly recognizable and worthwhile to follow. Out-of-the-box thinking, the ability to brainstorm ideas, and finding inspiration in unlikely places will help the content you produce resonate with your target audience.
Content Creation
A great idea in your head is one thing; the skills to create engaging content based on it are another. Content creation is an umbrella term for several creative skills you’ll need to master – or delegate – to produce comprehensive and effective marketing campaigns. Copywriting, design, and video editing are the fundamentals.
Content is any digital material you create to boost your brand’s online presence social media users will find useful, entertaining, or compelling. Whether it’s a funny ten-word quip on X or an explainer TikTok video, each piece of content you produce needs to maintain your brand’s voice, be free from mistakes, and subtly prompt audiences to want to explore more.
Analytical Thinking & Strategic Planning
Social media marketing efforts rely on and produce extensive data you need to know how to harness. Analytics tools let you track user engagement, lead generation, conversion rates, sentiment toward your brand or particular products, and much more.
Aggregating and leveraging such data is invaluable. It helps you see which parts of your marketing strategy bring results and which need tweaking. Future campaigns benefit from the insights you gain since you’ll know what type of content to focus on more. This way, you can allocate your time, budget, and creative efforts accordingly.
Analytics are also indispensable for quantifying your work and presenting its results more convincingly. This is especially helpful when presenting the impact of your work on brand growth and ROI to stakeholders without a marketing background that might otherwise fail to appreciate the importance of your work.
Cybersecurity
As much as it fosters growth and community building, social media presence has wide-reaching risks. Brands organically collect information on users while developing a reputation based on trust. That makes them tempting targets for cyberattacks, and it’s part of your responsibility to ensure negligence doesn’t help cybercriminals’ efforts.
Safeguarding social media account details is a top priority. The best way to do so while also protecting logins to any other tools and services you need to do your job is to set up a password manager. Since there are many on the market, it’s a good idea to check the password manager comparison table on Reddit before committing to a provider.
Password managers strengthen security by generating one-of-a-kind and sophisticated passwords stored in encrypted vaults. Uniqueness ensures one hacked account doesn’t compromise others, while two-factor authentication prevents even compromised accounts from falling into hackers’ hands.
The job’s nature entails checking your company’s socials throughout the day. If you do so from home or even a café, it can open you up to other attacks. Free Wi-Fi lacks the security necessary for accessing social media platforms since someone who monitors the network could easily intercept your traffic, including account access info.
You likely want to guard the account credentials from such attacks. And this is exactly why you should learn how to use a VPN. Using a VPN when you’re unsure of a network’s reliability is a great way to prevent unwanted breaches from happening. A VPN’s strong encryption and server routing make any attempts at capturing valuable information or tracking your online whereabouts pointless.
Digital Marketing Synergy
While it might be core to brands that built their reputation through Instagram or Facebook, you should treat social media marketing as part of a more comprehensive digital marketing space. Coordinating with colleagues who specialize in keyword research, influencer outreach, or search engine ad campaigns will help tie your campaigns with your brand’s broader marketing strategy. This will attract more customers and solidify the image you want your brand to project.
