What Does a Social Media Strategist Do?

A Social Media Strategist is a member of a digital marketing department who draws on experience and creative abilities to pinpoint strategic brand direction and ensure this is incorporated into campaigns.

The rapid expansion of social media platforms in recent years means that any brand that wants to compete, stand out, or achieve sector leadership status needs to embrace the social media opportunity – and the person who will take them there is a strategist.

It’s important to clarify that, for larger agencies or corporations with in-house digital marketing teams, strategy and implementation may be delegated to separate personnel. However, an exceptional Social Media Strategist can cut through the noise, highlight areas for scalable growth or reputational management, and inform the way brands utilize social media channels or position themselves as industry authorities.

Today, we’re exploring the role of a Social Media Strategist in-depth to uncover the skills and qualifications you’ll need to apply for a vacancy, the capabilities to look for in candidates, and the relevance and significance of social media strategy professionals in brand growth.

Understanding the Job of a Social Media Strategist

Social Media Strategists are primarily responsible for developing and implementing social media strategies, which commands several skills, including data analytics and marketing.

Depending on the size of the brand and the number of social media channels it uses, a Social Media Strategist may be tasked with:

• Monitoring campaign responses, engagements, follows, and re-shares.
• Copywriting or content writing to create a regular flow of posts.
• Video production and editing, or product photography.
• Graphic design and campaign development.
• Strategic planning and execution, adapting the strategy depending on results.

Of course, in a bigger company, there may be a design team or in-house copywriter who deals with the content creation. In this case, the Social Media Strategist will often be the person in charge of managing that content, ensuring all posts are cohesive and on-brand, and tracking the metrics associated with each post or story.

The Role of a Social Media Strategist Within a Digital Marketing Team

A Social Media Strategist and a Social Media Manager often work closely together, but these are two distinct and separate roles. The manager is focused on daily tasks, responding to messages and questions, or dealing with social media direct sales or live streams.

A strategist deals with the bigger picture, researching trends, competitors, and marketing plans and deciding the right way to implement these across social media platforms. They will also usually set targets or provide feedback about content, ensuring that it represents the brand in the right tone and links back to the overarching strategy.

Here’s an outline of what you might expect to deal with as a Social Media Strategist in a day:

1. Tracking third-party brand mentions: Handling negative comments or feedback professionally and quickly while boosting visibility by encouraging cross-shares, collaborations, or influencer mentions.
2. Monitoring SEO across all social media platforms, checking content is optimized for search.
3. Networking with sector leaders and influencers, keeping pace with new algorithms or standards, and capitalizing on opportunities to raise the brand profile.
4. Continually monitoring the outcomes of all live and paid-for campaigns, making adjustments to augment performance, and comparing returns or engagements against targets.
5. Overseeing new content creation, looking for quality, branding, consistency, and varied types and formats of content that align with your follower’s expectations.
6. Managing the social media strategy and updating it as necessary based on market research, emerging trends, and responses to current campaigns.
7. Reporting to management on performance against KPIs and identifying solutions to remedy any below-target outcomes.
8. Researching and monitoring competitors, particularly social media activity, initiatives, or promotions that are gaining increasing traction or drawing attention away from the brand.

Social Media Strategists often collaborate with a larger team and commonly work in bigger corporations or within digital marketing agencies. They might need to consult with designers, marketing departments, sales managers, product developers, and content writers, bringing all these specialisms together.

The job may also include supervising more junior personnel, making hiring decisions within a social media team, and training new staff to enable them to handle brand identity management or competitor research tasks on social media platforms.

How to Become a Social Media Strategist

It is rare for a Social Media Strategist to transition into this more senior role without solid experience in the world of business social media management, and the starting point is to have a broad grasp of all the aspects of social media, including:

• The audience and usage of each social media channel.
• User demographics and their expectations.
• Types of content and formats posted on each platform.

Strategists often move into this position, having worked within a social media team, potentially as a content creator, SEO specialist, or social media manager.

Whether you are already working in digital marketing, or within social media, you can attend conferences and webinars to stay up to speed with changes, follow influencers and brands relevant to your industry, actively participate in threads, and study social media brand management to improve your knowledge.

It’s also worth being mindful of broader digital marketing trends, including new tools since early adoption, or being one of the first brands to leverage new advertising opportunities or channels with a growing following can have a significant competitive advantage.

Finally, aspiring Social Media Strategists can complete varied certifications, depending on whether they intend to work within an agency, for a current employer, or a new business, and ensure they have a formal certification to verify their experience.

What Skills Do I Need to Become a Social Media Strategist?

Like many digital marketing roles, you’ll need numerous hard and soft skills to become a successful strategic planner. A background in business, marketing, or communications is ideal since strategy development, implementation, and monitoring can be complex.

Many of the recruiters and agencies advertising for Social Media Strategists list the following as essential or desirable criteria:

• Excellent communication skills: Social Media Strategists must be able to collaborate and network with a wide range of colleagues, influencers, platforms, and third-party businesses.
• Experience in content writing or production: Although the exact tasks and responsibilities will differ between brands, strategists with good copywriting abilities are often desirable.
• Superb knowledge of the social media world: Understanding how each channel works from a business and brand marketing perspective is essential, as is staying up to date as changes or features are introduced.
• Baseline graphic design capabilities are a positive since they mean a strategist can support content creators or other team members in a pinch or demonstrate their ideas for a new concept or strategic direction.

Social Media Strategists also need strong customer service skills since they will often be responsible for managing clients on behalf of a digital marketing agency and responding to B2C customers, either encouraging feedback and reviews to improve social proof or managing complaints and problems in a brand-positive way.

Social Media Strategist Job Description Template

As a Social Media Strategist, you will identify and utilize all relevant social media channels that align with the brand goals and promote the business to achieve predefined performance targets.

We require candidates to have proven abilities in multitasking and managing concurrent social media accounts. Success is measured against improvements in advertising returns, traceable brand awareness, social media engagement, and overall profitability driven by social media engagements and website traffic.

Social Media Strategist Tasks and Responsibilities

Our appointed Social Media Strategist will be expected to:

• Assist with social media content creation.
• Manage and oversee all brand social media accounts.
• Research and identify new consumer audiences.
• Control content scheduling and posting.
• Respond to interactions on social media.
• Advise on emerging trends or new platforms that present an opportunity.

Eligibility Requirements for the Social Media Strategist Role

We require applicants to have at least three years of experience in social media management, business strategy, or a similar role, with at least a Bachelor’s degree in communications, marketing, or a comparable field.

Essential criteria include experience managing brand social media accounts, superb communication abilities, a strong capacity to multitask and manage projects, and a high-level comprehension of web traffic metrics and monitoring.

Find the Latest Social Media Strategist Jobs with Digital Marketing Jobs

We hope this guide has illustrated what a Social Media Strategist does, the skills and competencies you’d need to apply for this role, and the tasks and responsibilities you might expect to assign to a Social Media Strategist if you are expanding your digital marketing team.

If you’d like to take the next step, please upload your resume, post a vacancy, or review the latest social media vacancies today.