A common demand for Social Media Marketing specialist work continues to grow. However, there's no clear understanding at the market: who SMM specialist is, what he is doing, and how his professional level can be measured.
Social Media Marketing is not the state of mind, and there's no magic in it, you can't become a SMM profi by having 5000 fans on Facebook, or participating in a couple of conferences. To become a professional you have to master related tools, and constantly updating your skills and self-educating yourself.
In this article we have decided to systematize and generalize the list of skills and competencies that are important for SMM specialist. These are skills we pay attention while hiring people to Katra Marketing, and we are trying to develop them in all of our employees working in digital marketing sphere. You can use this list while interviewing your candidates, or accepting the marketing agency services for your social media work.
SMM Specialist Should Know:
Strategy Development:
1. Define the target audience;
2, Analyze the interests and behaviour of the target audience;
3. Identify the target audience primary vectors;
4. Make customer niche analysis;
5. Develop the argument base;
6. Choose the social media platforms with high concentration of target audience;
7. Develop the common social media strategy for any type of business;
8. Choose the optimal tools for client's requirements;
9. Create KPIs system;
10. Identify the SMM's influence to the client's business;
11. Integrate SMM activities with the overall marketing strategy of the company.
Social Media Marketing Skills:
12. Right positioning of the Internet-communities;
13. Manage targeted ads on LinkedIn;
14. Manage targeted ads on Facebook;
15. Understand mobile advertising techniques;
16. Forecast the context advertising budget;
17. Optimize the context advertising budget;
18. Create and follow-up flashmobs and engaging promotions;
19. Creating apps for social media;
20. Create and promote events;
21. Adapting marketing campaigns for niche SM networks;
22. Manage viral campaigns;
23. Optimize geotargeting;
24. Neutralize the negative responses in social media and blog platforms;
25. Report problem issues to Facebook support;
26. Project and follow-up special campaigns;
27. Work with social networks related to professional connections;
28. Understand the principles of ratings and top searches;
29. Create branding channels on video hosting;
30. Organize partner programs for SMM work.
Community Management:
31. Push discussions to the flow needed;
32. Neutralize negative users in communities;
33. Increase users activity in social media communities;
34. Increase users turnover for public communities;
35. Organize and manage online-events;
36. Tune customer support system through social media platforms.
Content Management:
37. Create the content map for different SM platforms;
38. Adapt the existing content (articles, news, images) for different social media networks;
39. Write content for different social media formats;
40. Write texts for blog platforms;
41. Create content for Wikipedia format;
42. Write content for Twitter;
43. Write and spread press-releases;
44. Prepare informational causes;
45. Create video scenarios.
Interface Work:
46. Branding work for online communities;
47. Creating design for public communities;
48. Integrate company website with social media;
49. Align e-commerce website with social media;
50. Stimulate visitors to become community members;
51. Create landing pages;
52. Create welcome pages;
53. Create inserts manually;
54. Use services for insert creation on Facebook;
55. Understand the mechanisms of website conversion;
56. Work with WordPress, RSS, FeedBurner, ShareThis, and another mechanisms for stand-alone blogs.
Work with Community Opinion Leaders:
57. Define the target market opinion leaders;
58. Organize events for opinion leaders;
59. Organize sampling events;
60. Participate in marketing SM groups;
61. Assign administrators for forums and other online communities;
62. Work with brand ambassadors.
Analytics:
63. Use automated tools for monitoring;
64. Monitor social media and blogs manually;
65. Analyze news breaks (injects);
66. Analyze the overall tone of brand mentions;
67. Find out the negative responses in social media and blogs;
68. Analyze SM campaigns' effectiveness;
69. Work with primary tools of web analytics;
70. Generate unique URLs;
71. Follow the primary sources and traffic quality;
72. Define conversion actions of any online campaign;
73. Calculate the price of a conversion action;
74. Analyze the changes in information space;
75. Make social media researches;
76. Define the nature of negative responses;
77. Use internal systems for social media statistics.
Marketing Skills:
78. Keep in touch with online media managers;
79. Understand the social psychology rules;
80. Make SWOT analysis;
81. Define Unique Selling Proposition;
82. Media planning;
83. Media buying;
84. Initiate content reposting;
85. Calculate marketing campaign budget;
86. Understand the specifics of working with personal brands;
87. Understand new digital tools (mobile, augmented reality);
88. Use the primary digital marketing tools (context advertising, media advertising, SEO).
Managerial Skills:
89. Prepare a proposal for the client;
90. Participate in negotiations;
91. Look for SMM trends;
92. Find outsourced companies and know how to work with them;
93. Write use cases based on successful campaigns;
94. Make presentations;
95. Prepare editorial calendar and follow it;
96. Prepare reports;
97. Present new concepts, reports, ideas to the client;
98. Organize brainstorming in the team;
99. Manage projects.
Which skills did we miss? Any ideas?
P.S. If you obtain more than 50 skills from the list - come and work with Katra Marketing.
