Social Media Management Skills: Definition and Examples

March 2, 2021

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By: Indeed Editorial Team

As a social media manager, your primary responsibility is to manage an organization's social media accounts. You need to have advanced knowledge about the best practices for social media and emerging trends. With the right social media management skills, you can connect and engage with an online audience and help create a successful brand.

In this article, we share examples of social media management skills and how you can use them to help you with a career in social media.

Read more: Learn About Being a Social Media Manager

What are social media management skills?

Social media skills are the abilities you use to help you create effective social media strategies and campaigns. They help you complete your daily tasks as a social media manager and come up with effective social media marketing for your brand.

Social media managers need to be able to do the following tasks:

• Identify your brand's target audiences
• Research which social media platforms and content helps you reach more of your target audience
• Track social media data and campaign results
• Stay updated on the latest social media trends and topics
• Create content for social media ads and posts
• Adjust content based on social media ad results
• Use social media to address customers' questions and concerns

Related: How To Become a Social Media Manager

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Examples of social media management skills

Many types of social media management skills can help you become better at your career in social media. Many of these skills overlap when you're creating social media strategies for your company. Here are some important social media management skills to help you engage and connect with your target audience:

• Analytics
• Communication
• Creativity
• Customer service
• Design
• Planning
• Problem-solving
• Project management
• Public speaking
• Technology
• Writing

Analytics

Each social media platform has analytics, so you know how your ads and posts are performing. As a social media professional, it's important that you can look at these metrics and find meaning in them. Oftentimes, it's useful if you can take this data and create a visual out of it such as a graph or infographic. This way, you can present your findings to your team and brainstorm ways to improve your strategies.

Communication

You need to have both written and verbal communication skills. Your written skills can help you connect with your audience and convey ideas. Your verbal skills can help you work better with your team and explain new social media initiatives.

Creativity

Now that nearly every brand has a social media presence, you need to think of creative ways to make your online presence stand out. Social media trends frequently change, so it's beneficial to have the ability to consistently create new campaigns, initiatives and engaging content. Social media managers are always brainstorming new ways to make their content more interactive and memorable.

Customer service

Customer service has become a bigger part of social media. Now, customers use social media to directly reach out to companies with comments, questions or concerns. Since everything on a brand's social media accounts is public, you must have the ability to be polite and helpful when replying to people. It's useful to create human connections online to show that your brand is authentic and committed to its customers.

Design

Along with text, social media content needs to include a visual, whether that be a picture, infographic or video. You need the design skills to choose colors, fonts and images that represent your brand and capture your audience's interest. Design skills such as photo editing, video editing and graphic design can help you create better content.

Planning

You need to do a lot of planning and strategizing before starting a social media campaign. Each social media platform has different requirements than you need to account for. Every post within your campaign needs to have an intention and a goal. A lot of your planning happens quickly since social media trends change constantly.

Related: Creating a Successful Social Media Marketing Strategy

Problem-solving

Social media managers need to be prepared to solve issues with customers and technology. For instance, if someone is spamming your social media account, you need to quickly troubleshoot a way to remove inappropriate comments. Likewise, if a social media platform is down, you need to find ways to work around this.

Project management

As the head of a social team, you need to be able to effectively manage and lead projects. Your leadership abilities can help you delegate tasks, oversee your team's work and communicate the goals of each project. With project management, you must be responsive to deadlines and sudden changes in a campaign.

Public speaking

Public speaking is becoming an important skill for social media professionals to have since video is becoming so popular on social media. If you want to create videos in advance or do live videos, it's useful if you can comfortably speak on camera. Public speaking is also useful if you need to lead team meetings.

Technology

This may be one of the most important skills you can have as a social media manager. You need to fully understand how to use each social media platform and other third-party websites or applications that help you with your social media strategy. Much of your job may be troubleshooting technical issues, so a background in technology can help you quickly figure out solutions.

Writing

Since most social media posts include some kind of text, copywriting and content writing skills are useful for social media professionals to have. You need to be able to write copy that is clever, clear, on-brand and free of grammatical errors. It's important to have an understanding of your company's tone and voice for consistency.

How to improve social media management skills

Here are a few ways you can improve your social media management skills:

1. Identify your weaknesses.

Start by identifying areas you could improve on and then work on developing those skills. Create specific goals to help you stay on track with your efforts. Connect with other social media professionals to learn more about the industry and skills you should focus on.

2. Seek opportunities to gain experience.

Experience and practice can help you improve your social media management skills. Find opportunities such as networking events, workshops, online seminars and training sessions to help you improve your social media skills. If one of your co-workers knows how to do something useful, find a time to have them teach it to you.

3. Learn new programs.

Social media marketers use all kinds of programs to help them with their job. Here are some programs that can help you become a better social media manager:

• Adobe Creative Suite
• Buffer
• Canva
• Hootsuite
• Grammarly
• Later
• Sprout Social

4. Find online resources.

Most social media platforms have a library of resources to help you with any questions you may have. You can also refer to YouTube for many of your social media questions. Enrolling in an online course about social media strategy may also be useful for you.

How to highlight social media management skills

Use your social media management skills to show employers that you are the right fit for a social media role in their company. Mention these skills during each part of the hiring process to increase your chances of getting the job.

Social media management skills for resume

When applying for a social media job, highlight the required skills the employer features on the job description. Think about which of these skills you have and include them in the skills section of your resume. Employers may use these skills as keywords for their applicant tracking systems, so if you include some of them, your resume is more likely to pass through the system's scan.

Social media management skills for cover letter

In your cover letter, elaborate on your strongest social media management skills. Connect them to previous experiences you have that are relevant to the job you're applying to. Keep your cover letter brief, clearly written and free of typos or grammatical errors.

Social media management skills for the job interview

During a job interview, the interviewer may ask you about specific social media management experience and skills. Prepare for the interview by thinking of answers to these common skill-based questions:

• What is your greatest strength?
• What is your greatest weakness?
• Which social media platforms and programs do you have experience using?
• Do you know how to analyze social media metrics?
• Can you create visuals for a social media post?
• Explain your experience with photo and video editing.