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Social Media Managers

10 Required Skills

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Intro...........................................................................................3

Community Management...........................................................4

Search Engine Optimization........................................................5

Creative Design..........................................................................6

Polished Writer..........................................................................7

Comfortable with Emerging Trends and Technology...................8

Analytical Mind..........................................................................9

Strategic Vision..........................................................................10

Tactical Awareness.....................................................................11

Presentation Ability....................................................................12

Leadership..................................................................................13

Conclusion..................................................................................14

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Social Media Managers: 10 Required Skills

Introduction

As the marketing landscape has evolved over the last 5 years, so has the skill set of a person

involved in efficient social media management. It is all too painfully common to see companies

placing social media responsibilities on interns or employees with little experience in the

business world. This trend will inevitably change as more businesses realize the value in social

media.

Before diving into the required skill sets of an effective social media manager, we would like to

point out that social media DOES require an investment, in human resources, software, and

time for process development. We believe that human resources are the most important

aspect of a successful marketing program.

Based on the following list, you will see that these are skills only acquired from years of

experience and dedication. In 10-15 years, every CMO or VP of Marketing will have a

background in internet marketing of some type. Based on this prediction, it would be of interest

to become familiar with the following disciplines.

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1. Community Management

Community management is the equivalent to the front lines of any type of activity. This

is the day to day communications that your company is having with your customers, no

matter what social platform you choose to be on. It is important that a company trusts

these employees, as they have an enormous amount of power to influence customers in

a positive way OR a very negative way.

Think of the send button as the trigger of a gun. The bullet can hit the bull's eye with

careful aim and consideration for wind, angle, and distance, or the bullet can miss its

mark, ricochet and potentially harm someone standing nearby. Therefore, if you are a

bigger company, it is important to create light approval processes for outgoing

messages (especially if you are in a regulated industry like finance or pharmaceuticals).

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2. Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is an important factor in any type of content

development process on the internet. In order to truly understand where social media

fits into the overall picture, one must have a firm grasp of basic SEO principles. Some of

the skills are:

HTML

Learning HTML is like learning Spanish or French. In order to become fluent in

the web language, you have to immerse yourself into an html writing process.

With practice comes understanding. Even if you aren't completely fluent, it

provides an understanding of what search engines are looking for when crawling

your website for keywords.

Keyword Analysis

Without a keyword strategy, your SEO efforts will go nowhere. At a very basic

level, keyword analyses look for all the related terms used to find a product,

service, information, etc. Within a keyword analysis, you will want to look at

search volumes, ranking difficulty, and competitor use of the same keywords.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO refers to elements of your own website that need to be optimized

for search engines. Some of the important elements include: page titles, body

text, title tags, meta descriptions, alt tags on images, and more.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to inbound links to your site with anchor text. An example of

an anchor text link is the word "social media". If I wanted to do a guest post on

another blog and include a link back to my site, I would insert the following html

code within my guest post: <a href="http://www.socialmediahq.com"

target="_blank">social media</a>. This will make the text look like this: social

media. Inbound links are very important for your SEO efforts, as they give search

engines votes of confidence that your site is providing quality content. Google's

proprietary ranking system is called "Page Rank", which ranges from 0-10. It is

known that inbound links heavily influence your Page Rank score.

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3. Creative Design

First impressions count, and they are part of the branding experience. Therefore, it is

important that a social media manager has an eye for creative design. It is also

important that this person has a sense of the production process for creating art.

Unorganized production operations often lead to low quality end-products.

It is advisable to incorporate multiple rounds of proofs for clients or management. The

first round is reserved for narrowing down a broad concept to 2-3 choices. The second

round takes the 2-3 choices and provides more experimentation with layout, colors,

font, etc. After pinpointing a concept that works, the third round takes the design

framework and incorporates it seamlessly across all channels (Website, E-mail,

Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

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4. Polished Writer

Let's face it. We are still in the early stages of social media development, and the

majority of communications are text based. Therefore, it is very important that a social

media manager have polished writing skills. Whether they are writing blogs, e-books, or

e-mails to their boss, it is important that they can convey the message in a

grammatically correct and organized fashion.

An understanding of the editorial process will also help a manager keep track of all the

written content that is being produced. First drafts, Re-writes, and Final edits all come

into play here.

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5. Comfortable with Emerging Trends and Technology

What we really mean by this is that a social media manager must always have their

finger on the pulse in regards to breaking news, new products/services, or new ideas.

Since the internet marketing industry is evolving at a quick pace, it is important that the

manager be hungry for constant learning. If the person becomes too comfortable, your

company has the potential to fall behind the competition.

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6. Analytical Mind

The term "ROI" is hot within the social media industry right now. Rightfully so, as many

managers and executives alike are struggling to gather data that leads to critical

business decisions. Therefore it is in the best interest of a company to hire a social

media manager that has a thorough understanding of traditional business analytics as

well as web analytics.

The social media manager will have to weed out the data that doesn't align with the

unique business goals of the company, establish comprehendible reports, and analyze

the reports to give executives insight on whether goals are being met. Within an

operational social media strategy, there will inevitably be bumps and turns along the

way. Being able to interpret data to optimize your efforts will benefit any organization.

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7. Strategic Vision

It is critical that, whoever is managing social media for your company, they

understand the difference between tactics and strategy. Strategy is the

bird's eye view of how a company is going to achieve their business goals,

and tactics are the steps taken to support the strategy.

Strategy could mean establish thought leadership to increase sales leads OR

it could mean providing education to your customers in order to increase

customer retention. Strategies come in many different forms, and they are

all unique to your organization.

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8. Tactical Awareness

Now that a social media manager has an idea of what strategies are, they can begin to

implement tactics that will support strategies. From the example above, establish

thought leadership to increase sales leads, tactics could mean producing content that is

thought provoking and distributing it in multiple formats and across social networks.

The manager will also be sure that the content is findable in search engines like Google

or Bing using a thorough keyword analysis. Finally they will make the content easily

shareable through multiple share buttons (i.e. like, tweet, +1, LinkedIn Share).

All of the different tactics will then be laid out into an editorial calendar, so that each

piece supports the business goal of increasing sales leads. This is especially important if

your company sells multiple products and services. Certain times of the year might

warrant different pieces of content, so the editorial calendar will help you plan ahead.

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9. Presentation Ability

All of the work a social manager does will be in vain if senior management doesn't

understand the value. Therefore, it is important one can present information on paper

as well as explain progress in an articulate manner.

A social media manager will be able to summarize key points, and go into more-depth if

asked a specific question. This will instill confidence in management, as well as provide

evidence to obtain budget for program expansion.

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10. Leadership

It is unrealistic to think that one person can handle all of these tasks by themselves, so it

important that a social media manager has leadership capabilities. As Kristin Zhivago

from Revenue Journal wrote in 2010, these are the 10 characteristics of an effective

leader:

1) Be Truly Humble - Lead to Serve

2) Be Non-Judgmentally Observant

3) Face and Solve Problems

4) Ruthlessly Improve

5) Be Fiscally Conservative

6) Invest in the Business

7) Communicate Consistently, Clearly, Concisely

8) Give Clear Direction

9) Aggressively Evolve

10) Have a Sense of Humor

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Conclusion

Now that you have a breakdown of the skills companies are looking for, it is important for you to

get a high level understanding of each skill set. This will allow you to make better hiring

decisions.

If you are an aspiring social media manager, it is important that you immerse yourself in this

world. Find a mentor to show you the ropes, and executing some trial and error will allow you to

grow personally and professionally.

Questions?

Need more in-depth discussions of what we covered in this white paper, or Need help with your

social media strategy? Feel free to reach out to us at info@socialmediahq.com.

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