In part 1 we clarified what is social media manager’s role and what they do on a daily basis, so let’s look four basic skills that any social media manager should have.

Knowledge of Social Media

Maybe an obvious one but any social media manager does need to have social media skills and knowledge. You can either have a qualification or on the job experience, but if you aim to get a job at a digital marketing agency or in a large company managing social media platforms, a qualification from a reputable education provider or a couple of years of experience is essential. Knowledge on the below is essential:

• What type of content is best suited for the audience you are targeting
• What type of content works best on each of the social media platforms for those audiences
• Understanding & knowing how to optimize content on each platform
• Knowing how to engage the audiences rather than just reach them with your social media posts

Copywriting

As a Social media manager, you will do a lot of writing, in particular the posts on the various social media platforms. Each of the social media platform has a different style of posts and writing. On Linkedin, for example, a more professional tone, us required whilst on Facebook the tone of the post can be lighter and more fun.

You must write messages that are quickly succinct and easily understood the audiences you are targeting and that will promote a positive sentiment about the brand. As Forbes puts it, social media manager “will be communicating with customers on a daily basis – and 99% of this communication will be in writing.”

Therefore, types of writing you need to master are;

• Short and effective HEADLINE writing
• INTRODUCTIONS that will engage with your audiences
• As those who read your article will NOT READ your full article but scan them, you need to structure your text for ease of reading using subheadings, bullet points and numbering.

Research

The world of social and digital media is ever-changing with new tools and measurements coming up at the fast rate. As an active and keeping up to date social media manager, you need to set up Google Alerts on popular topics related to your brand and use tools like Feedly, Buffer and BuzzSumo to keep up with trending content.

Some current trends that you might want to track are:

• Importance and rise of video marketing
• The rise and role of mobile
• Virtual reality – fad or part of our future

Flexibility

In social media management flexibility is important as in any marketing role as social media landscape moves quickly. So being flexible and highly adaptive is an absolute necessity.

It’s not enough to be create a post or schedule a bundle of posts. You must continue to try out new features and change posts based on testing you monitor for your posts so you detect trends of likes and displaces of your audiences.

One method is to use A/B testing – writing posts in multiple ways, with different images or headings or copy. This can help you to determine which types of images and copy are working for your brand/company – and which aren’t.