SMM is not only the placement of information on your company’s social media page, but a multifaceted complex thing that helps the company to achieve the goals of the highest level. And this profession does not work separately and independently of the company, it should be included in the complex of the entire company.
An SMM manager can be a marketer, strategist, copywriter, designer, analyst, and customer service representative – sometimes all in one day.
Wherever you are looking for a person for this position, you need to highlight 5 things that a candidate for the role of an SMM specialist should be able to do.
Be able to create graphic images
Posts or articles containing images and thematic pictures are perceived better by the audience and have more views and reposts. Therefore, the skill of creating catchy and attractive images is essential for any SMM-specialist. Making posts on social networks stand out from the crowd means providing more views and attracting new people who may become your consumers in the future.
A brand story is written not only in words, but also by creating a coherent aesthetic presentation across multiple platforms. VKontakte, Instagram or Facebook – it doesn’t matter. The visitor should recognize the corporate identity if he flashes in the social network feed, where he is not a subscriber of the brand. Building brand awareness is an important part of an SMM professional’s job.
An SMM client does not have to be an advanced user of Photoshop or other graphic editors, but the ability to find and process images is still a must.
If you are already working with an SMM and he is doing well, except for working with illustrations, suggest that he study the Canva educational blog, for example, or take a design course at SMM.school.
Clearly understand the mechanics of promotion and marketing
Since an SMM manager is engaged in managing, distributing and promoting information about a company on social networks, he must have an idea of u200b u200bwhat place in the promotion of your content. The most important thing in SMM is the content, and the SMM-boxer is its main distributor. But he not only posts publications on all platforms where the brand is present – he monitors user reactions to different content formats, communicates with users and studies statistics.
That is, the primary responsibilities of a social media marketer may include, but are not limited to:
- posting interesting thematic content in communities or on the public pages of the companies they promote;
- communication with members of these communities or subscribers of public pages;
- attracting new subscribers and keeping old ones;
- quick reaction to mentions of the company in social networks and neutralization of negativity.
But how do you know if marketing is working? There is only one way: to analyze statistics. How did this statistic affect the bottom line? This data will tell the strategist how to develop further tactics and help determine the format of the content in which to invest.
The term “analytics” is used quite widely in SMM. It refers to both social media indicators – likes, comments, reposts, and business indicators – traffic, leads, conversion, income. A good social media manager ties together both types of metrics to get a general idea of how social media impacts a business.
This is why analytical skills are among the most important and useful in social media. You can learn to check metrics and reports, but an analytical mindset can help you understand the data, make the right decision, and not rely on assumptions.
Be able to express your thoughts in writing
An SMM should know the language well, be literate and be able to express himself through writing. From eye-catching ad copy to witty banter, an SMM must know how to write text that will evoke emotion in the audience. If the headlines or first lines aren’t interesting enough, people won’t be motivated to find out the content.
Even if he does not write new posts every day, he will have to communicate with clients, and most often this will happen in writing. He must be able to convey his interest and passion for the company or product / service, be able to clearly and clearly express the main idea.
SMM is the voice of the brand, and half of his job is to inform people about the company. To grab the audience’s attention and increase the number of clicks, an SMM must post a compelling story, and without good copywriting skills it will be difficult.
In addition, the copywriting skill is important for a specialist not only for working in social networks – it is likely that you will have to tell the management about the strategy or give arguments in favor of increasing the budget for SMM in writing. The ability to formulate thoughts in clear, well-reasoned letters will greatly facilitate the communication between the employer and the specialist.
In this article, you can find out what metrics to use to evaluate the work of a content specialist: “KPIs for a content manager: we pay not only for the amount of materials”
If you don’t have a separate targeting position, your SMM should learn how to work with paid ads. An ad in social networks can look like a regular one, but it has its own characteristics and, unlike regular ads, it can already be targeted – up to advertising – at each specific user.
Targeted advertising (promotional posts) makes it possible to take advantage of the so-called word of mouth and even narrower targeting, that is, defining the target audience and working with it. An SMM must understand how to use such advertising in order to take advantage of its benefits.
In order to set up an advertising campaign, an SMM must draw up a portrait of a potential client, find and segment the target audience according to different characteristics: gender, age, place of residence, income level, interests, hobbies and a dozen other parameters. This will help the specialist make the exact offer to the consumer that is most likely to result in a conversion.
The SMM must understand which ad format and on which platform will be better served in accordance with the budget and goals of the campaign.
Thinking like a customer service
Of course, informing clients, publishing interesting and engaging posts is an extremely important thing in SMM. However, just as important is the customer response and how adequately you respond to their requests. Feedback will help to identify possible shortcomings in your activities. Therefore, an SMM-specialist should be a supporter of the ideology “the client always comes first,” that is, he is obliged to promptly respond to requests that arise from buyers.
It is important for an SMM to have good conversational skills and developed empathy in order to help the client on social networks and smooth out negativity without risking the brand’s reputation.
Customer service is a very important process that must be ongoing and not stop even after a person has bought your product or used a service. On the contrary, after-sales service acts as a kind of guarantor for the client that the company, which he used, seeks to make the purchased product even more useful for its buyer.
The main goal of social networks is effective interaction with the community. This humanizes the brand – subscribers feel like they are not only receiving offers and news, but they can respond. Studying how the brand’s audience communicates helps the SMM better understand the needs and concerns of consumers. An SMM manager can ask the right topics, steer the conversation in the right direction, answer questions about the product and the industry.
An SMM manager must not only know how to behave in order to prevent bad PR, but also have the skills to cope with a full-blown crisis if necessary.
Here we talk about how reputation management in social networks will help: “Mentioning a brand on the Internet: how and why to monitor”
conclusions
SMM is a job for those who love complex tasks and variety.
An effective SMM specialist combines both hard skills and soft skills – both of which take time and effort to develop.
The ability to link social media strategy to larger marketing and business goals separates the seasoned professional from the newbie.
One of the most enjoyable and challenging things about being an SMM professional is that studies never end. You need to constantly improve and develop your social media skills to continue your career. The more an SMM focuses on developing these skills, the better results they will be able to achieve and see the true impact of their work on the business.
When looking for a candidate for the position of an SMM specialist, you need to take into account not only his work experience in the field in which you run your business, and his availability of all the necessary skills, but also his desire to improve them in such a dynamically developing area as SMM.
Whether a specialist will cope with all the tasks, more precisely, whether he has enough time for all these matters, you can find out from the answer to the question: how does he automate work processes? The fact is that there are many services to which an SMM-specialist can shift a considerable part of his duties and cope with the work with a minimum of effort. For example:
SMMplanner – for scheduling posts, teamwork on a project, image editing and automatic posting to different social networks.
DataFan – for analytics and creating dynamic reports on work in social networks in a few clicks.
Pepper.Ninja – to search for thematic communities and target audience in social networks according to the specified parameters.
The ability to work with automation services is another important skill of an SMM specialist, which he must have in order to do his job efficiently.