In a world where marketing is no longer a thing of bricks and mortar only, business owners are beginning to explore digital means that will help skyrocket their ROI. And this is where social media comes in.
According to Statista, over 4.8 billion people are actively using social media platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, and Instagram. Interestingly, this figure is not constant since it changes every minute with dozens of new users creating a social account.
But creating a social media handle for business use still doesn’t guarantee an exponential boost in social presence, traffic generation, or even sales. This is because it takes quite a lot of effort, investment, monitoring, and skills to grow your account.
That’s why brands and startups want experienced social media consultants like you, who can hold their social fort up at all times. But what exactly is a social media consultant, and how can you become one today? Let’s find out.
Table Of Contents
- What Is A Social Media Consultant?
- 9 Soft And Hard Skills You Should Have As A Social Media Consultant
- 5 Steps To Become A Social Media Consultant
- Conclusion
You can directly jump to a section of your choice or keep scrolling.
What Is A Social Media Consultant
Ever heard of a social media marketer before? These people use social platforms like Facebook and Instagram to promote a business. Usually, a social media marketer has no concern about growing the social presence of a business unless otherwise asked to do that.
On the flip side, social media consultants are people who handle the growth and management of a company’s social media handles. Other tasks include active marketing with tracking methods in place. You can think of these consultants as those who have holistically hacked the life vein of marketing with every type of social media platform in vogue, unlike marketers, who are mostly pros on one or two types of platforms only.
9 Soft And Hard Skills You Should Have As A Social Media Consultant
Aside from getting yourself acquainted with the ins and outs of social media, there are some soft and hard skills that you should have.
1. Design Skills
You must be able to carry out some minor designs. Yes, we get it - you can just hire a graphic designer on a freelance basis to do that for you. But there are times you might need urgent designs for a campaign, and you won’t have your designer on the ground.
So give yourself some backup and learn the minors. You can take a few courses, which will only sip a few hours out of your time. Besides serving as a backup, design skills will help you understand the concept of graphics better and communicate better with your design team.
2. Creativity And Flexibility
Creativity involves being able to build awesome concepts from technically basic pieces. As a social media consultant, you will have to handle a variety of queries along the line. And your client expects you to be capable of seeing solutions from a different perspective and implementing them in the best way possible.
Flexibility helps you to make dynamic decisions that can adapt to changes in the future. Also, it is a quality that will come in handy when working with the content and design team, if any. When you combine both creativity and flexibility, you are already a step ahead of other consultants working with only rigid, backwater ideas.
3. Excellent Communication Skills
Communication skills are essential across all lines of professions available, whether you’re a social media consultant or not. But you will need them here more since you have to shuffle reports between your team and the client, possibly every few hours.
There’s a shift in trend, and you want to implement new strategies? Good, communicate your plans. Also, clients should find it easy to share their thoughts with you instead of standing on their toes, feeling their words might not really count because you are the “consultant” while they are not.
The same principle applies to the vice-versa scenario. Some clients might be really cringy to work with, and they typically have complaints about everything. So it’s up to you to cancel your contract or nudge the communication in a favorable way to gain their trust.
4. Trend Follower
Trends and social media are inseparable. A Fortune 500 company dropped down the list? You will find information on that first on Twitter or other social media, even before news websites pick it up. That’s where the 4.8 billion social media user count comes in, as you are likely to find a social media user almost everywhere on the planet ready to “tweet the tweet.”
Back to you as a social media consultant, you should be able to pick up the latest format on social media. People are now fans of video content over images? Be a part of the first consultants to implement that. Doing that ensures you can provide fresh content to your client's audiences each time.
5. Good Eyes For Details
You can call it attentiveness or keen focus - anyone works. Often, the things that will make the next content for your client’s handle go viral could be because of the very silent details present in the content. That’s why you should train yourself to pick out valuable info from every given information.
Client briefs about what they need from you when managing their social media accounts are very valuable. While you might have worked on tons of accounts before, you shouldn’t be so overconfident to the extent of neglecting these details.
And funny enough, even your clients might not necessarily notice the important things to focus on, but you must.
6. Priority Management
Talk about a busy schedule - that’s something you can’t escape even if you work with a fully-funded team. So you should be able to manage your priorities properly and make sure there is timely execution of the projects at hand.
For better results, you can take the help of platforms that offer features like time recording and work management, especially if you are working with multiple clients at the same time. A content calendar will also help a lot.
7. Research
Research is a non-negotiable skill for a social media consultant. First off, research skills mean you know what to type to get some classified information. This goes beyond just surfing Google headlessly with non-specific queries. You should know what sites you can interact with for precise information.
Besides researching for content or trends, you must be able to locate your clients. Without good research skills, you will find it difficult to get new clients even if you know who your target audience is.
SEO
Wondering why this is on the list even though you’re not a website content marketer? By now, you should know that social media is a part of content marketing. And the lead traffic you generate on social media is most of the time going to a landing page or website. You can even use social media to generate backlinks for valuable content on your website.
Besides that, platforms like LinkedIn share SEO similarities with search engines. For example, your profile might rank higher than that of other social media consultants, depending on how you optimize it. In fact, LinkedIn encourages using relevant keywords when building your profile. But without understanding how traditional SEO works, you will find it really difficult.
9. Content Marketing
You might have heard of the popular quote, “Content is king.” That’s the reality, and if you lack the basic principles of content marketing, forget about even managing a client’s social media account.
Importantly, social media feeds on content. If there is no content worth reading, these platforms are only as useful as fax, nothing more. With content marketing, you can figure out the best content pieces to release, what graphics illustrate your messages, the video format to go live, and many more ideas.
5 Steps To Become A Social Media Consultant
Now that you know the necessary supporting skills to work on, you can follow these steps to begin your journey as a social media consultant:
1. Build Your Social Media Profile
Whether you’re a social media nerd or a self-proclaimed social media consultant already, you need to build yourself a profile. This is because there should be a place for people to easily reach out to you.
Except for serving as a landing page, your social media profile should also be evidence of what services you offer. You claim to be able to manage a client’s social media handle, right? So, show them yours first and let personal results speak more.
2. Go Beyond Organic
A social media consultant grows and manages clients’ social media accounts through various means, including the organic approach and paid advertisements. You should also apply the same strategy to your profile.
Advertise your services actively, so long as you have the capital. Do the same things you would normally do for a client and ensure your campaigns are top-notch enough to be used as samples in the future.
Marketing techniques like cold emailing will be of great help. However, make sure to use email tracking tools to ensure that you get the best out of your email campaign.
3. Get The Skill Or Upskill
It’s one thing to have the soft and hard skills noted above. And it’s another thing to be able to navigate your way around different social media platforms. For a good start, you need to familiarize yourself with all the available platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Gen-z spots like Instagram and TikTok.
Often, this might pose a real challenge since you’re not just scrolling these platforms as a regular social media user. You need to dig out the hidden functionalities that the average person does not know about. There are also business tools, especially on Twitter and Facebook, that you should check out.
After knowing the ins and out of every accessible social media platform, you need to properly learn about social media marketing. There are free and paid professional courses all over the internet. You can start with YouTube crash courses first before moving to paid ones for presentable certificates.
And if you are already a geek in handling social media, you still need to upskill. Find out the new trends and see what works or what has been updated on each platform and how to use them. Don’t also forget to explore beyond the social circle when upskilling. The more refined digital skills you have, the better you are.
4. Look For Internship Openings
If all you do is upskill without actually adding some real practical experiences to your name, almost no firm will trust you with their account. Business owners want proof and a track record. This is where interning comes in.
Check out LinkedIn or other job professional platforms and look for companies in need of an intern. Spend time optimizing different people’s or brand handles while measuring your goals and the strategies that worked.
The only downside to this is that most companies are not willing to compensate their interns. But that doesn’t mean you won’t find paid internship offers out there. Moreover, interning helps you to narrow down and figure out which niche you should choose.
5. Grow Your Professional Network
Now that you have a profile, grow your network. Network, network, and keep networking with relevant people in the industry. The truth is networking takes a lot of time and conscious effort. However, it’s worth the effort when your network becomes your affiliate and recommends you for jobs.
Interestingly, a variable percentage of your network might eventually become your clients later. That’s why you should target industry leaders and business owners or marketers.
Ensure you offer valuable content and progressively influence those in your circle so as to show yourself as someone worth working with.
Conclusion
The journey of becoming a social media consultant is not hassle-free. So if you’re just starting out, you should ensure you have all the necessary skills that will help you stand on the pyramid peak.
Create an awesome social media profile, and let it be your portfolio. Build a valuable professional network on different platforms, especially LinkedIn and Instagram. Gather more work experience with resettable results, and finally, go beyond organic to find your clients.
Are you a social media consultant looking to streamline your workflows, analyze client data, schedule posts, and engage with your clients' audiences effectively? Then, you might find Statusbrew as a helping hand in your journey to amplify your impact. Book a free demo to understand how easy it can become to handle your client's work!
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