What are the skills and credentials necesarry for a social media marketer? What would they need to do?

Hi John,

First of all, that's really great that you're interning through a high school program! Glad you found the work interesting, and there's certainly a lot of career opportunities that involve social media.

In terms of what credentials and/or skills you need, that will depend on what kind of job you want precisely. You can be a social media marketer, digital marketer, community manager, and more—many positions center around the ability to use social media effectively.

Social media marketers mainly write content, share it on social media, and work to grow and engage those audiences. Digital marketers do a broader range, including writing blog posts, SEO (search engine optimization, to make sure the site is highly ranked in Google search), working with the media, etc. As a community manager (my current role), you would build and engage a community of people (online AND in person), which includes social media, but also lots of other tasks. A typical day for me includes social media, moderating online forums, forming strategies for the future, meeting with the rest of my team, and writing blog posts (and much more).

These jobs do tend to require a college degree (4 years, bachelor, not masters degree). I majored in Literature, so you don't necessarily need to major in something like business. I'd actually recommend majoring in business, communications, English, and/or computer science. Ultimately, it's more important that you have a college degree than what you major in.

For now, you're doing exactly the right thing: interning at places of interest to gain experience. You can also start reading up on social media best practices. You might even want to start your own blog about what you learn, and practice promoting that blog on social media! One thing your future employers will look at is how you run your own social media accounts, so it's great to already have a good online presence.

Best of luck, and hope that helped clarify! Feel free to follow up with any other questions you might have.

Resources:
socialmediaexaminer.com (this is my favorite social media website, and there's a podcast every week, too).

Hello John,

Great questions. Congratulations on landing the internship. There are a couple of things you can do as a social media marketer especially if you want to land that full time position with your company. College is not 100% necessary, but I highly highly recommend it because it will open you up to so many ideas and techniques that even I do not know yet. It will also allow you to practice writing enticing articles on marketable material

Here are some other things you can do in the mean-time.

• Familiarize yourself with the company you work for. The importance of this would be to present information to your followers effectively and in a way that instills trust.


• Familiarize yourself with what is newsworthy and going viral in the industry your employer services and discuss with your supervisors how you can share this information with your followers in a way that will cause them to share with their friends and family


• Another thing you can do is discuss topics with other members of your marketing team. This will give you topics and possibly articles to reference when interacting with your company's followers.


• If your company is posting an infographic, a blog article, a how-to video, moving to a new location, providing services to a new area, etc etc. These are all things you can post about.


• Research the type of social media marketing other companies in your industry are doing, especially your competitors.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Was the campaign successful?


2. Why was the campaign successful?


3. Does this type of campaign apply to my business?


4. If my company did something similar, could the outcome be similar?

Most importantly you need to keep your eye on the prize. Your entire purpose is to bring new business to the company by growing your company's online presence via social media platforms.

Here are a couple of articles you can read to get yourself started:

• Successful Social Media Campaigns


• 10 Successful Social Media Campaign Tips

Here are 2 articles that discuss Social Media campaigns that ended up being very successful. Pull the basic idea from these and discuss with the marketing team how you can apply these to your company:

• The 30 Most Brilliant Social Media Campaign Ideas


• 3 Best Social Media Campaigns of 2015

Hey John, that's a great question. Landing an internship is a great start and it'll help launch your career. I wish I was able to land an internship at such a young age, you'll learn so much in the first few weeks of the internship.

The answer above is filled with great information on how to become a social media marketer, I'd just like to add that it's great for you to explore the different social media platforms. This includes the popular platforms like Facebook and Twitter, but you should also explore other sites like LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr.

It's worth while to explore the different sponsored services social media sites offer. Good luck.