Becoming a social media marketing specialist is one of the best choices if you are starting out on working remotely from the comforts of your own home. However, although it may seem like an easy job, especially if you are already familiar with the uses of the different social media sites, know that this home-based opportunity may not work for everyone. Therefore, before you start sending your applications for this type of work, try to understand first what this job entails and see if you possess the right qualifications and the skill sets required.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is a process used by businesses to increase their website traffic, build their brand, expand their reach, and increase their sales. This method involves the use of popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. According to the We Are Social website, around 3.8 billion people are using social media as of January 2020, and the number is expected to increase over time. With these high number of users, it is not a surprise why companies now prefer hiring social media professionals to help boost their business.
What Skills Are Needed to Qualify as a Social Media Specialist?
Being a social media specialist does not just mean posting or advertising on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms. It involves a lot more. In fact, if you are planning on becoming a social media manager, you should be ready to allot time for monitoring and updating client pages, checking and answering emails and chat messages, attending to comments left by readers or customers on client’s FB, Twitter, or Instagram accounts, sharing interesting news to followers, and checking with your employers on what other things they need done for their social media campaigns. In a nutshell, here are some important skills that you should possess if you want to become a successful social media specialist:
Excellent Writing Skills
One of the many things that attract people to a particular social media page is the method by which updates are written or how information is presented. Indeed, visual graphics and attractive, funny images have great potentials to attract people, but it is the process by which bits of information are presented that lure people to come back for more. In this regard, excellent writing skills are important. The best social media marketing professionals excel in their work not because they know how to put images on their managed pages but because they know how to use interesting headlines. If you want to excel as a social media marketing specialist, you should have the ability to write engaging introductions and be able to structure your text for easy reading. Remember that online, people usually just skip and scan through information, so getting right to the point and using bullets and subtitles for whatever information you want to convey can help a lot.
Strategic Planning Ability
The primary reason why businesses are hiring social media managers or specialists is because they want their brand to gain more reach and to get ahead of the competition. As a social media specialist, it is your job to make these goals achievable for your client. Clients rely on their social media marketing managers to outline goals for the success of their campaigns, define target audiences, perform competitor analysis, and use the right platforms to achieve maximum results.
Community Management Skills
Social media marketing involves establishing a connection with readers, existing customers, and potential customers. If you are to become an effective social media marketing specialist, you should have excellent community management skills, and this means having the ability to create a healthy environment within the brand community you have created. It also means you should be able to respond to comments on your social media posts, and to engage with readers, regardless of whether they are trolls posting negative feedback or legit customers. Having outstanding people skills is a must in this type of work, even if it is done online.
Understanding What Type of Content Works
There are various types of content that can be published on social media accounts for marketing purposes. These can include videos, infographics, GIFs, memes, and social media posts to name a few. At times, posting videos alone may work for one brand, but it may not work for another. The same is true with other types of content. Therefore, a social media marketing specialist should be able to pinpoint which of these content types will work best for the brand being marketed.
In-depth Understanding of the Various Social Media Platforms and How They Work
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, Snapchat, and LinkedIn are all social media platforms but they may not work the same way for marketing and advertising. Pinterest, for instance, may work more for female-focused businesses while Snapchat is more geared towards an audience comprised of millennials. The point is that these various social media platforms have different target audiences and you need to understand which of these platforms will work best for the brand you are trying to market.
There are many companies looking to hire a social media marketing specialist. If you do not know where to start looking, click here to get some ideas.
Like any other profession, becoming a social media marketing specialist entails a lot of passion and determination. You should love what you are doing if you want to succeed.
