How important is Social Media literacy to employers?

I would not make this the focus of your resume, unless you are specifically going for a job as a Social Media coordinator. Be mindful - its probably not a long-term career choice unless you are working with a startup or working *for one of the companies that makes the platforms that you have listed. Social media is getting slow acceptance among larger companies - all of the ones I have worked for in the past 10 years have strongly discouraged use of these during work (or banned them entirely on company networks). As a result, putting such experience on a resume might hurt you more than it would help you. If you are considering 'Social Media coordinator' as a profession, I'd make sure to have a backup plan. A startup company of 10 people needs 1 Social Media coordinator... and a company of 10k employees might need 2 or 3 Social media coordinators. Since nearly every millennial has experience in any or all of these platforms, the jobs are scarce and the number of people capable of doing them are numerous. Those are less than desirable prospects for the long term.

Hi Mounia,

Great question! Sounds like you're thinking about a role in marketing or possibly community?

I think a great thing about social media is it's accessibility, so it could be a good way for you to get started building up some skills and a network. As Rebecca and Chris said above, if you're going for a social media role, they will expect you to have a solid understanding of the platform and most likely a sizeable following to demonstrate that you can influence and engage online.

There are however lots of other roles that social media literacy translates to - one in particular is community management, which is what I do! Both roles involve engaging people online, understanding social science and human behaviour and strong communication skills... so that might be another role to explore. If that sounds interesting, here are a couple of community management sites that might give you more of a flavour of what's involved:
http://cmxhub.com/
https://www.feverbee.com/

Good luck exploring career options - keep asking questions! :)
Liz

Being social media literate is important across the board. Make sure your profiles represent your own personal + professional brand. You can show what you're passionate about by what you post and who you follow and interact with. This is a great place to hone and show off your writing skills (even in small doses) and even interact with brands that you like or might want to work with or at one day!

Hi,

In addition to some of the great uses above, it's also becoming more important for people who are in a sales role -- it's an additional route to keep in touch with their customers and sometimes gives them a glimpse of what problems their customers are trying to solve long before the customers reach out to any vendors. For sales, it is one of many supporting skill sets they need to have -- not the focus of their career, so just as someone else already said, in that case it would not be the focus of a resume.

Good luck!

You should be familiar with them, but unless you are in a marketing role or a social media coordinator role, you probably won't use them much on the job.Where knowledge of social platforms can come in handy is for your own job search. LinkedIn is a particularly helpful tool for networking and there are actual job postings on the site. In my profession as a career coach, I use LinkedIn and encourage the students I work with to use it also.

My response is a little different. The world is changing very quickly and is appearing to be a disrupter in how we do work. My company recently launched a social knowledge sharing platform. It has been so successful it changed the way we work and communicate in a matter of months. We have people of all ages crowd sourcing for information and we are able to provide a higher degree of customer service. Also, think of Uber and how it has changed our world. More to come on that front as well I am sure. So, just to focus on social is probably not the best idea. But, I read your question to ask if employees should know about social platforms. I think yes.