13 Sep 5 Essential Skill Sets For Your Social Media Team
We hope you had time to catch our team’s August webinar on Staffing for Social Success! (And if you didn’t you can find the recorded webinar here.) One point we drove home during the webinar is that resource allocations for social media teams are constantly changing. And with that, so are the skill sets necessary for an effective social media marketing team. As many social media and digital managers look to staff their teams we would encourage you to consider the following 5 essential skill sets for your social media teams.
Customer Relations
Even if you’re not specifically staffing for a customer service representative, it’s likely that your social media marketing team will have some level of interaction with some of your best consumers. The best community engagement is that with an eye for customer relationships. Is your social media team empathetic and skilled in listening? Those are important competencies when dealing day to day with customer questions, complaints and even praise among your top brand advocates.
Data Collection and Analysis
The best social media teams routinely review and analyze their work. Collecting data and inputs from various social media networks and channels is crucial to social media success. However, while many tools tout the ability to aggregate the data, it’s the analysis of that data that becomes an essential skill set for your team. Knowing the difference between, “We received 22 Facebook Shares this month, ” and, “We received 22 Facebook Shares on UGC content this month and need a plan to encourage more UGC so so we can syndicate more of that type of content” is your ticket to elevating the brand’s social media presence.
Research and Strategic Development
Social Media has always been a cocktail party. No one likes the jerk at the party who only speaks about themselves. The best social media marketers invest a decent amount of their time getting to know their consumers and the industry. This means they must have an eye for research and strategic development. They may invest time and efforts into reading relevant publications, evaluating trends and exploring potential opportunities.
Storytelling
As a manager of strategists, this is a very important skill set for my team. We dedicate time to honing this skill and it comes across in how we develop recommendations, speak with our clients and partners about topics they may not fully understand, and in how we develop content and strategies that really resonate with our target audiences. This is a key skill set for anyone on a social media team. For a content developer, content that tells a complete story will hit harder among your fans and followers. For an analyst, a report that visually shows an executive team the results of social media marketing efforts in an easily digestible format with a beginning, middle and end is the difference between securing budget and downsizing your teams. Hone this skill with passion and dedication.
A Test & Learn Mentality
Sure, Instagram just launched Stories. All of the major publications are talking about it. What is your social media team’s first reaction? Is it to throw up a post with little regard for what it did for the brand? Or is it to analyze the best way to test this opportunity and a plan for how to analyze it after the fact? We love testing new platforms and technologies. But the best social media marketing teams will have a test and learn mentality because social changes SO QUICKLY.
What other skill sets do you think are necessary to your social media marketing success?