As a continuation on this series of ‘Key Skill’ blogs, I thought I’d focus on the skills necessary to become successful as a social media marketer. In the search engine optimisation industry this is still a relatively new job role, and with the search engines having their rankings increasingly influenced by social media activity it is becoming increasingly important. There will undoubtedly be a crossover between these abilities and those mentioned in the previous post about the skills needed as a link builder, but that should be used to illustrate its value as a job role rather than to detract from its importance.
There are many skills a social media marketer needs, and I hope here to write about only a small selection of them; how to develop those skills and how they can influence social media performance. I believe that an intelligent social media marketer can develop general online visibility as well as social media outreach, and these are both crucial for managing brand reputation and delivering an impressive ROI. There is no doubt that social media share data is influencing the SERPs (although the correlation is apparent, it is near impossible to determine the extent to which share data can affect rankings) and the demand for social media marketers is going to continue to grow. Here are the top 3 you need to succeed in social media marketing.
1. Be Social
This may seem obvious, but it appears to me that often businesses on social networks are more focused on using it as a tool to increase profitability rather than a social tool to increase outreach. Social networks are viable business tools, but there is a balance to be struck between seeking commercial opportunities through the likes of Facebook and Twitter, and utilising their value as a socially active inbound marketing tool. I have commented before on the importance of understanding the differences between the various social media networks and this is certainly crucial for social media marketers. Knowing how to strategize for each individual network in order to maximise the specific potential that each one has is a critical skill professionals in the social media industry.
A strategy that works on Facebook may not work on LinkedIn and vice-versa. This might mean that you can’t replicate the same content across the major social channels, content deemed to be valuable by company Followers on Facebook may be classed as trivial by the industry experts on LinkedIn. Being in touch will the social functionality of these networks is a major plus point for a social media marketer and exploiting this functionality to extend social outreach is an achievable goal with this knowledge.
Direct marketing acumen will obviously be beneficial when strategizing a social media campaign, but this knowledge must interlink with the opportunities presented by the social networks in order to maximise the potential that each one has. This is one of the greatest talents a social marketer can have.
2. Be Creative
One of the most valuable features for businesses using social networks is the ability to spread a message, raise awareness or build brand reputation quickly across a mass market. Knowing how to target the content is, as mentioned above, vital, but having the ability to produce high quality, original and dynamic content is another skill that the complete social media marketer should have. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean writing the best prose or designing the best Infographic (although it does have to be of a certain quality) but if creativity is used to produce engaging content that people want to share and discuss then that is perfect for a social media optimisation campaign.
As discussed in the former link building blog, this creativity must be foregrounded by analysis, and fortunately this comes in the form of the traditional marketing knowledge that was mentioned in the first point. Understanding what sells to a specific online community and building content around that knowledge will really intensify the quality of a social media campaign and increase the chances of increasing social media outreach.
The best social media marketers will have the ability to think analytically and operate creatively to increase social media outreach for the dentists they are working for.
3. Be Technical
One of the greatest things about search engine optimisation is the availability of detailed analytics reports that allow marketers to accurately measure traffic and monitor user behaviour relating to a raft of various metrics. The social media marketer will also be expected to understand how analytics reports work and how they can be used to fine-tune a social media campaign.
The most used analytics software is undoubtedly Google Analytics and the reports it generates provide information about referral traffic from social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and more recently Google+. Deciphering the data in these reports is not an easy task and distilling valuable information from them is something that requires practical working knowledge. However, they do provide statistics that can be help marketers determine which aspects of their strategy are succeeding and what is faltering.
Having the technical capacity to read and understand a Google Analytics report should be considered a fundamental skill for social media marketers. There are other tools (such as Shared Count) that are specifically built to track social media share data, and the skills used to ready analytics reports are translatable to those tools. A marketer that has this knowledge will be able to provide much more valuable input when strategizing for a social media campaign.
Are you a social media marketer?
As with the other blog entries I have made relating to this subject the examples above are just a small selection of the skillset that a social media marketer should be equipped with. There are many other peripheral abilities they should have had such as organisational skills and perseverance, but often they come with the territory in the majority of search engine optimisation job roles. If you have any other queries about social media optimisation or careers in SEO then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
This blog was written over 6 months ago and Internet Marketing and SEO is an always changing industry which means the information within this blog may be out of date. Use caution when using any methods or suggestions within it.
