It goes without saying, the social media industry is growing in leaps and bounds and so are social media jobs. Not surprisingly, Linkedin is swarming with 18,000+ social media gurus. But then, tell me one thing, how many of these are *real* social media gurus?

Don’t get me wrong. In principle, there are people who are holding relevant social media job profiles. But, the explosion in social media marketing space has led to so many made-up social media job titles as well. In a way, it was expected. But then, remember, simply tweeting your everyday office activities or Instagramming your office tours won’t suffice if you are looking for a role of social media manager.

Here are certain key areas that social media managers should get a handle on to build their career.

Visual Skills

If anything, visual trumps content in the social space. It’s a known fact that articles with images receive more views than those without. Even Tweets with images receive 18% more clicks over those without them. The same goes for Facebook. In fact, photo posts on Facebook get 120% more engagement over non-photo posts.

Further, quality images are central to platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram.

Long story short, social media managers should develop a flair for conceptualizing and creating eye-catching images for social media posts and blog posts.

For this, they can depend on several online tools such as Canva and Crello to develop brilliant social media images.

Customer Service Skills

Customer Service has grown over and beyond phones emails and chats these days. With customers airing their grievances on various social media platforms, companies need to shift their focus more toward social media these days.

Customers expect quick responses to their complaints. And, only proactive, and not reactive, use of social media handles will help them do so. And, it’s okay, if things are not within the control of a social media manager. Just make an offline customer service associate look into the matter ASAP.

For all we know, social media is the face of the company. So whatever a brand does on social media will directly affect the brand. So, social media managers should learn to play safely with regard to customer service issues.

Content Skills

Social media space is flooded with all sorts of content. So, it’s not easy for brands to grab the eyeballs of the users’ in the social media space. Meaning, brands really need to think hard in terms of coming up with great content that resonates with the users. Images of cats and dogs might work sometimes, not always. You need to experiment. Provide value. Content, in every sense, should inform, entertain, save money, inspire and more.

With more and more social media platforms thronging the social media space, grabbing user attention has become a real challenge that brands need to master by gaining mastery over content.

So, if you are looking to make a career in social media, first find out what sort of content works in different social media channels and then implement them accordingly.

Some of the checkpoints you need to be careful about include: No grammar errors. No spelling errors. All in all, you need to have good command over the language.

In short, you need to convey your ideas clearly in writing. For more ideas on social media content, get in touch with top content marketing companies, directly.

Advertising Skills

As a social media manager, hands-on experience with regard to paid social ads is sure to be of great help. According to a Salesforce State of Marketing Report, social media advertising will be a top priority for marketers this year.

But then, if you think your experience in offline advertising will bail you out in the online advertising world as well, think again. It’s because social media advertising is a different beast, altogether. It calls for a thorough understanding of human behavior. What that means is, you need to come up with innovative social media ad solutions that should resonate with the social media users. Plus, you should be expert in the placement and optimization front as well. For more information on social media advertisement, you can some top social media marketing companies, globally.

SEO Skills

Given that social media managers will be sharing blog content on various social media channels it’s important for him or her to learn the connection between exposure on social media and increased search rankings. Sure, social media signals may not directly impact search rankings, but then there are indirect effects. For one, it increases referral traffic, thanks to wide-spread engagement and reaches on social media.

Wrapping Up

Social media manager has a lot more responsibilities on his head these days than ever before. So if you are planning to hire an employee or a social media agency for this role, make sure they are experienced enough and love to upgrade their skill sets in keeping with the changes happening in the industry.

Do you think any other skills, apart from the skills mentioned above, will help social media managers better justify their role. Share your comment below.