10 Important Skills Your Social Media Manager Needs in 2017Having someone with the right mix of skills can boost your company's social media presence.

A decade ago, the role of asocial media managermight not have even existed. Today, however, almost every company is involved in social media one way or another.

Related:Top 10 Social Media Management Tools You Should Try Now

一曲ick look at Google Trends shows the rise in interest in the term "social media manager" over the years, and it seems that people have never been as interested in the term as they are today.

What does it take to be a great social media manager? What are the skills to master and traits to have? How can you work on those areas?

In this post, we'll try our best to answer all those questions. We'll share 10 skills and traits that are crucial to being a great social media manager and relevant resources to help you improve in those areas.

Skills vs. traits

Throughout this post, we'll discuss the various skills and traits we feel are most important for social media managers. But before we dive in, I quickly wanted to share some of my learnings about the difference between skills and traits.

Here's a great explanation of skills vs traits fromRed Letter Resumes:

When it comes to finding your ideal social media manager, I feel you may be looking for the right mix of tangible skills (things like copywriting and analytics) and traits (such as curiosity).

7 skills top social media managers share

1. Copywriting

Copywriting is a fundamental skill for social media marketing (and probably all areas of marketing). Writing good copy is required in many areas of a social media manager's role, from filling up yoursocial media profile descriptionto crafting tweets and Facebook posts.

Todrive engagement and clicks, you have to fit a captivating story into your social media post and without great copywriting skills that can be difficult.

To enhance your copywriting skills, I'd highly recommend studying a few copywriting formulas to help you craft inspiring copy. Finding a copywriting formula (or two) that works for you can be a great productivity boost and also improve the quality of the social media content you publish.

One of our favorite copywriting techniques here at Buffer is the "Before -- After -- Bridge' -- you may recognize it from a few of our blog posts and social posts. Here's how it works:

Before -- After -- Bridge

Before-- Here's your world …

After-- Imagine what it'd be like, having Problem A solved …

Bridge-- Here's how to get there.

Example:

Resources

• Copyblogger(blog)
• 75 Resources for Writing Incredible Copy that Converts(blog post by KISSmetrics)

2. Design (graphics and videos)

Research has found that social media posts with images receivemoreengagementand43 percent of consumerswant to see more videos content in the future.

Social media evolved a great deal over recent years, and we have moved away from mostly plain text based updates towards visual content such as images and videos.Designing and creating visual contentis becoming an essential skill for social media managers.

Resources

• Canva's Design School(courses and articles)
• Why Every Marketer in 2016 Needs to Be a (Part-Time) Designer: 53 Design Terms and Tips to Level-Up(blog post by Buffer)
• 如何创建社交媒体视频预算吗(blog post by Social Media Examiner)
• A Video Marketing Guide On Creating Epic Content for Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and More(blog post by Buffer)

3. Public speaking (confidence in front of an audience)

With features and apps likeFacebook Live,Instagram Liveand Periscope, live videos are becoming more and more important on social platforms. And marketers have noted this change, with42 percent of marketerssaying they want to create more live videos.

Why are marketers excited about live video? I believe the answer is two-fold: reach and engagement. Facebook Live videos are more likely toappear higher in the News Feedwhen those videos are live than after they are no longer live. From an engagement perspective, live content also provides opportunity for high-engagement and 1:1 interactions with audiences.

To tap into the live video trend, social media managers have to be confident enough to go live on social media to connect with their audience. Having public speaking skills will help you to present your ideas, interview guests, answer impromptu questions and chat with your followers in real-time.

Related:How to Build an All-Star Social Media Team in 5 Steps

If you want to see our awesome social media manager,布莱恩•彼得斯, in action, you can find his live videoshere。And below is a short clip of Brian discussing viral content:

Resources

• Toastmasters(resources and community)
• 11 Places to Learn Public Speaking Skills for Free(blog post byInc.)
• 15 essential tips for mastering Facebook Live(blog post byMashable)

4. Customer service/community engagement

Social media is thetop channel people go to for customer care, but only21 percent of businessesuse social media forcustomer support。This means there's a huge opportunity here to provide remarkable customer service experiences.

As the face of your company on social media and the person who is likely to be responding to at least some of the messages your brand receives on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, it's important for social media managers to have conversational skills and empathy to help you customers on social media.

Community engagementis quite similar in many ways. A great social media community manager is able to ask the right questions to facilitate engagement and answer questions about the product, company or industry.

Resources

• Support Ops(podcast)
• The power of vulnerability(video by Brené Brown)
• Customer Support Academy(blog by Respond)
• 社交媒体的考官(blog)

5. Behavioral Psychology

With data and analytics, you knowwhattype of social media posts do well. Behavioral psychology tells you thewhy-- for example, why are people attracted to certain posts? Why do people share certain posts?

Knowing thewhatallows you to spot trends and try to repeat past successes; knowing thewhyenables you to understand the underlying causes for those trends in order to try and create future successes.

For example, your data might tell you thatyour tweets with images are doing better than tweets with only text。基于这些信息,您可以创建more tweets with images. However, it could be that your followers prefer visual content. Without knowing thepsychology behind trends, you might miss out on opportunities to create other types of visual content such as videos andGIFs。

You certainly don't need a degree or high level of expertise in psychology to be a social media manager, but a keenness to learn and understand psychology at some level is an important skill.

Resources

• Nir and Far(blog by Nir Eyal)
• 50 Must-Read Psychology Books(blog post by Gregory Ciotti)
• An Introduction to Marketing Psychology: How to Use Human Behavior to Make More Informed Decisions(eBook by HubSpot)
• 15 Psychological Studies That Will Boost Your Social Media Marketing(blog post by Buffer)

6. Analytics

The term, 'Analytics,' is used quite broadly here, referring to bothsocial media metrics(e.g. likes, comments, shares etc.) andbusiness metrics(e.g. traffic, leads, conversions, revenue etc.). A great social media manager is able to understand both types of metrics and tie them together to give an overall view of thecompany's social media performance against business goals。

A social media manager should be the guiding light in your business when it comes to measuring your performance across various social channels. As such, learning the ins and outs of social media metrics and judging which ones are meaningful for your business is essential for a social media manager.

For example, if your goal is to drive traffic from social media channels to your website and drive sales, being able to attribute traffic and conversions back to channels and even certain posts will help your team to understand what content is helping you to achieve your goals.

Knowing how to read and interpret data is now an important skill for social media managers.

Resources

• Free Social Media Analytics Course(course by Quintly)
• Google Analytics Academy(resource by Google)
• Startup Marketing Metrics for Pirates(video by Dave McClure)
• HubSpot(blog)

7. Budgeting

As a social media manager, you might be allocated abudgetto work with. Apart frompaid advertising, you might have to pay for things like asocial media management tool,designs,imagesorcourses to improve yourself。Having some basic financial and budgeting knowledge can make you better on the job.

While you might not need to be an Excel expert,understanding Excel and knowing what you can do with itcan be very valuable.

Resources

• How to Spend a Social Media Budget(blog post by Buffer)
• Social Media Marketing Budget Template(template by Demand Metrics)
• How to Manage Your Entire Marketing Budget [Free Budget Planner Templates](blog post and templates by HubSpot)
• Microsoft Excel -- From Beginner to Expert in 6 Hours(Udemy course)

3 personality traits great social media managers exhibit

8. Curiosity

A curious social media manager would immerse herself in the social media world, staying up-to-date with the latest development and experimenting with new social media marketing strategies.

Related:5 Social Media Studies That Will Boost Your Marketing Skills

布莱恩•彼得斯is an epitome of this quality. When we discovered that videos, especially live videos, are becoming popular on social media, Brian immediately started making more videos onFacebookandTwitter。When Snap Inc. launched Spectacle, Brian got it as soon as he couldto try it out and figure out how marketers can use it in their social media strategy。

HubSpot VP of Marketing Meghan Keaney Andersonsaid this really well when shedescribed her ideal social media hire:

Resources

• How to Be a More Curious Person: 7 Tips for Becoming a Lifelong Learner(blog post by HubSpot)
• 8 Habits of Curious People(blog post byFast Company)

9. Adaptability

Adaptability complements curiosity. When you discover something new or spot a trend, being able to quickly adapt to it can keep you ahead of the curve.

For example, the most engaging type ofsocial media contenthas shifted from texts to images to videos. InaFast Companyarticle, Mark Zuckerberg was reported to have said:

A great social media manager is able to keep up with such changes and pick up the necessary skills (e.g. graphic design, video making etc.). (Imagine when virtual reality becomes the most popular type of content!)

Resources

• 4 Steps To Becoming More Adaptable To Change(blog post byFast Company)
• How can you learn faster?(Quora thread)
• Four-Hour Workweek(blog by Tim Ferriss)
• Make It Stick(book by Peter C. Brown)

10. Business Savviness

Being able to generate likes and shares is great; knowing how social media fits in with the entire business strategy is even better! A business-savvy social media manager sees the bigger picture and understands the role of social media in the company.

They understand which metrics are most relevant and crucial to the business and how social media can help to push them higher. For example, a B2B social media manager might focus on generating leads for her sales team while a B2C social media manager might focus on increasing customer purchases directly. This way, her impact goes beyond just social media but to the entire company.

Resources

• 11 Helpful Resources for Improving Your Business Skills(blog post by HubSpot)
• How to Get Hired as a Social Media Manager (and Then Rock the Job Once You Have It)(podcast by Buffer)

Skills and traits others think are important

To give you an unbiased view on this topic, I'd love to share the skills and traits that other companies and individuals think are important:

What the Best Social Media Community Managers Actually Do in Their Jobsby HubSpot

• Content creation
• Marketing analytics
• News junkie
• Customer service
• Community management
• Funnel marketing
• Project management

Lindsay Kolowich of HubSpot also mentioned the necessary skills for each of these areas in this article.

10 Essential Skills a Social Media Manager Needs To Have on Their Resumeby Jeff Bullas

• Strategy planning
• Tactics and execution
• Community management
• Understand how content works on a social web
• Optimizing content and technology
• Creative mindset
• Writing skills
• Be on top of the latest digital marketing trends
• Analytical skills
• Leadership and communication skills

How to Build A Social Media Strategy Dream Teamby HubSpot and Sprout Social

• Patience
• Technical aptitude
• Proactive
• Daring
• Passion
• Level of Experience
• Customer-first mentality