Social media strategists lead an organisation’s social media strategy in order to boost visibility and customer and client engagement
As a social media strategist, you’ll manage an organisation’s online presence by developing a strategy, producing good content, analysing usage data, facilitating customer service and managing projects and campaigns.
Social media management can be a distinct role in larger organisations and is sometimes known as social media coordination. In small and medium-sized companies, the role may be combined with other marketing and communications responsibilities. In agencies the term social media account manager is often used.
Social Media Strategist Responsibilities
- Design social media strategies to achieve marketing targets
- Manage, create and publish original, high-quality content
- Administer all company social media accounts ensuring up-to-date content
- Liaise with writers and designers to ensure content is informative and appealing
- Collaborate with Marketing and Product development teams to create social ‘buzz’ regarding new product launches
- Facilitate client-company communication (respond to queries, get reviews and organize chats and Q&A sessions)
- Prepare weekly and monthly reports on web traffic and ROI
- Monitor SEO and user engagement and suggest content optimization
- Communicate with industry professionals via social media to create a strong network
- Train internal teams to integrate and maintain a cohesive social media strategy
- Stay up-to-date with new digital technologies and social media best practices
Skills You’ll need to have:
- a solid understanding of the use of a range of social media platforms, particularly in relation to advertising/branding and customers
- strong copywriting and editing skills suitable for each platform, from knowing how to write a successful tweet to using effective storytelling techniques
- knowledge and understanding of algorithms and search engine optimisation
- creative skills for contributing new and innovative ideas
- strong communication and people skills for articulating ideas to colleagues and clients
- leadership qualities to lead and motivate a team
- excellent team working, collaboration and networking skills
- organisational skills, with the capacity to prioritise and work across multiple projects
- project and campaign management skills
- the ability to work well under pressure in order to meet deadlines
- skills in data analysis and interpreting statistics
- online community management and customer service skills to strike the balance between publicity and stimulating direct discussion with potential and actual customers
- an eye for detail and the ability to work accurately
- motivation and commitment.
How to become a social media strategist
To kickstart a career as a social media strategist, you first need to acquaint yourself with various social media platforms.
With a good understanding of how each platform works, the user demographics, and the kind of content published on the site, you’re one step closer to being a social media strategist.
This is, however, the starting point, to land good jobs in the field, you can try out the following strategies:
- attend conferences organized by influencers and digital marketers and create a rich network
- join twitter chats and participate actively to get a gist of what it’s like to manage a brand on a personal level
- join social media groups and observe what people post, how other users respond and the things that attract the most attention. You may also market small businesses in such groups as you work your way up the career ladder.
- read and subscribe to blogs that analyse digital marketing trends
- be an early adopter of social media trends and tools. This will boost your confidence and help you establish yourself as a trendsetter
- network with influencers. Such people will help you establish your personal brand as well as give you information on where to be and how to land gigs or jobs
- enjoy being on social media and develop a passion for the job. If you can’t enjoy responding to audiences and crunching data, then you’ll definitely not enjoy working as a social media strategist.
The toolkit of a social media strategist
Here’s a list of tools you can use in your day-to-day activity as a social media strategist:
Schedule content and collaborate with other teams:
- Planable
- Buffer
- Hootsuite
- Tweetdeck
- Meetedgar
- Sked Social
- AgoraPulse
Measure your campaigns’ performance and analyse your competitors’ social media actions:
- Socialinsider
- Buzzsumo
Track the SEO results
- SemRush
- Ahrefs
Monitor the brand’s mentions:
- BrandMentions
- Brand24
- Mention
What’s the difference between a social media strategist and a social media manager?
Even though the two terms may be used interchangeably, there are remarkable differences.
A social media strategist has a broader scope of responsibilities. They focus on the day-to-day social media activities, but they also think long term.
Their strategies are meant to cut across several departments in an organization, including marketing, customer service, PR, sales, advertising, and legal.
In a nutshell, social media strategists work on bridging the gap between offline and online activities in an organization.
Social media managers, on the other hand, may strategize campaigns, but their focus is on execution.
They monitor engagements on a daily basis and oversee the success of individual campaigns. Social media managers are likely to be found in digital marketing firms while social media strategists are likely to work in organizations as in-house experts or as account managers in marketing agencies.
In reality, the two professions may overlap depending on an organization’s size, resources, and structure.