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10 Top Skills Your Social Media Manager Should Have in 2017

Are you considering hiring a social media manager in 2017?

If so, it’s a smart decision!

Today, social media content creation and distribution is one of the single most time-consuming tasks in all of digital marketing. In fact, it claims a massive 18.5 percent of the day. That hasn’t stopped marketers from investing in social, however, and 42 percent of social marketers are planning to increase their spending on platforms like Instagram in the coming year. What’s more, 61 percent of social media teams are planning to hire a social media manager in the next year.

If you’re one of the companies planning to bring in someone to help with your social media, it’s critical to ensure the person you hire has all the skills needed to help your company succeed.

Read on.

10 Skills Every Good Social Media Manager Needs

Whether you’re adding to your social team or building one from the ground up, these 10 skills are critical for all good social media managers:

1. Professional Copywriting Abilities

Copywriting is central to social media, and any good manager you hire needs to be a strong copywriter, as well. From crafting profile content to writing tweets or making posts on your Facebook timeline, excellent copywriting skills will help your social media channels stand out from the rest.

For best results, be sure you find a manager with a strong background in storytelling, as well, since this will help make your social copy more engaging and exciting.

2. Graphic Design Abilities

While your social media manager doesn’t have to have a design degree, it would be a plus if he or she did. Today, 43 percent of customers report wanting to see more videos in the future of social media marketing and having someone with strong graphic design abilities is a great way to help deliver on this.

For best results, look for someone with a long history of creating video content, and find a social media manager who has demonstrable skill creating graphics and videos. These skills will all come in handy when it’s time to brand your business or create graphics for your social platforms.

3. Strong Speaking Skills

Imagine if you want to give a conference or send your social media manager out to rep your company. Now, imagine if said social media manager can’t bring him or herself to speak in front of a crowd because he/she clams up and get nervous. That would be disastrous, wouldn’t it?

To avoid this outcome, find a manager with strong public speaking skills. An ability to present him or herself in public is a critical value for any social media manager. This is particularly the case since the rise of live-streaming platforms like Facebook Live, which bring live speaking into the everyday.

4. Strong Customer Service Skills

In the coming years, companies will start to use social media more and more for their customer service needs. As such, having a social media manager who understands your customer service vision and knows how to address client needs and concerns is critical. Today, 34.5 percent of customers prefer to receive customer support via social media, and knowing how to offer that will go a long way to set your company apart from the rest.

5. Sensitivity and empathy

While it might seem like sensitivity and compassion are traits better suited to a therapist than a social media manager, figuring out what type of content to post at what time is a critical skill for social media managers. This, of course, requires a high level of sensitivity and empathy.

Why do people like certain posts? What makes a post compelling? All these details are best left to an empathetic and sensitive person with an eye for customer happiness.

6. An Understanding Of Social Media Analytics

If your social media manager can’t use analytics to figure out what’s working and what’s not, you’re in trouble. For best results, find someone who knows how to use metrics like conversions, shares, comments, and likes to interpret your social data and enhance it accordingly.

7. Budgeting And Financial Management Abilities

Social media can be expensive, and it’s easy to let the budget blow up if the social media manager doesn’t understand how to allocate resources and make smart financial decisions.

When your would-be social media manager can figure out how to spend and how to save on things like PPC advertising, design, images, or courses, you can put your budget to better use and funnel more of it back into your company.

8. Passion

Social media is a fun environment, and it’s essential that your new manager is passionate about finding ways to enhance it for the sake of your followers. Excitement about the trends of social media and a willingness to learn new approaches are also critical.

9. Flexibility

Social media is also a live-and-learn platform, and the best social media managers are the ones who don’t have a problem pivoting when it becomes apparent that something won’t work. Flexible social media managers make the best choices and discover the best new avenues for the companies they work with.

10. A Focus on Quality

Sometimes, it’s easy to allow social media content to lapse into low-quality stuff. For best results, a social media manager needs to focus on quality in all things – from posts to videos to live updates and more.

Quality is critical to grabbing readers and keeping them there, and finding someone who insists on the same level of quality you do within your company will serve you well.

Hiring a Social Media Manager for 2017

If you’re one of the many brands who wants to hire a social media manager this year, you can rest assured that it’s an excellent choice. In addition to helping you manage your social media, these people can also align the various aspects of your company and help you build your brand online.

Julia McCoy is a bestselling author of So You Think You Can Write, podcaster and an expert content marketer. She’s also the founder and CEO of Express Writers, a leading online content creation agency, with more than 60 content writers and strategists. Julia leads her team to serve hundreds of worldwide businesses with the highest-quality content for their online presence. Follow Julia’s blog.

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