Social media strategists often wear many hats. This is the reason you should get the necessary skills if you’re considering the career path.
The size of the company you’re working for will influence your roles to a great extent. Your responsibilities will revolve around creating strategies and managing campaigns if you’re working with a large organization.
However, if you choose to work with a small business, you’ll likely handle nearly all the relevant tasks ranging from creating content to analyzing data from campaigns. Let’s take a look at the roles of a social media strategist.
· Create social media strategies
A social media strategist often relies on data to define a brand’s target audience and their online habits. More so, they will identify their favorite platforms and the type of message that will resonate with their audience.
Social media strategists can’t afford to ignore trends, or else they will lose customers to competitors. After spotting the trends that are worth pursuing, the next thing is to design a strategy for the brand.
· Set and monitor KPIs
Social media strategists use KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to track the success of each campaign. They don’t focus on vanity metrics such as the number of likes or comments like regular social media users.
They set KPIs that align with each campaign. Some of them include brand mentions, web traffic, impression, and program sign-ups.
· Establish relationships with key leaders and influencers
It’s imperative to have sound networking skills if you’re planning to become a social media strategist. These skills will help you build good relationships with key leaders and influencers in your industry. This, will, in turn, help brands achieve their social media marketing goals.
· Grow a robust online community
Social media engagement revolves around building a community. It takes time to achieve this goal, and you must keep investing your efforts as long as the business is still running. Social media strategists must build a meaningful relationship with their audience using creative tactics.
They will look for an approach that offers a better ROI when it’s time to adopt paid tactics. Another thing is that you must be able to come up with effective damage control plans because things can go south quickly.
· Measure campaigns
Having thousands of followers rarely translates to quality leads or sales. Social media strategists understand the importance of measuring the results of each campaign and tracking KPIs to detect any changes.
· Manage social media content
Brands need to share content for more engagement. It’s not enough to share promotional content; they must design a content strategy that aligns with their goals and customers’ needs.
The right social media strategists can handle this task by creating fresh content or collaborating with content creators. These professionals also maintain social media calendars and manage social media platforms.
· Equip team members
It’s not surprising that many brands trust seasoned social media strategists to make hiring decisions for their departments. This is because they know the soft and hard skills that other team members should possess. More so, they can easily determine whether a candidate is a good culture fit.
After onboarding new team members, they will be committed to training and offering constructive feedback to help them grow in their careers.
Even though you can kickstart your career by applying for an entry-level position, it’s not the only route. Start exploring fresh social media strategists opportunities that keep emerging on authentic job boards and other platforms.