by By April Winz
The keyword “social media” in a job search on LinkedIn returns over 2 million listings. It’s clear that social media has become an integral part of nearly every company, business and brand. But, what hard skills does it take to get hired in one of these roles? This post will look across different job listings to see what they’re requiring for applicants and highlight LinkedIn Learning courses to help you gain the skills you need to land that job.
Social Media Management Platforms
A central skill that nearly every role mentions is the need to have experience or understanding of common management platforms such as Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social or Meta Business. These tools allow you to add posts to a calendar, schedule them for posting, track mentions and comments and even analyze data. While they can be intimidating or seem unnecessary at first, they quickly become an integral part of the role – as you’ll realize that simply logging into Instagram and hitting “post” is not how professional accounts are managed.
To gain a deeper understanding of how these platforms work, check out LinkedIn Learning’s course on Hootsuite Fundamentals. Or, this one that goes over the differences between popular platforms and how to utilize them. Note, you’ll need to log in to access the full content.
Analyze and Measure
Shortly after this, is the skill of analyzing data from your accounts to strategically inform your decisions moving forward. While there isn’t one single platform that is consistently listed across applications, they overarchingly highlight the need to be able to make reports. Most social media management platforms (or the apps themselves) have a tool to analyze data and export it as a .csv file. This can then be turned into an Excel spreadsheet to be analyzed and displayed in reports.
LinkedIn highlights courses ranging from the more general introduction to social media measuring to the specifics of how to accurately visualize the data and use Excel for data analysis.
Fundamental Photo and Video Skills
While not all roles will consist of capturing content yourself, many highlight the need to have a comfortable understanding of photography and videography. What makes a good shot, how to capture it and what equipment to use. Also, the confidence to do so at events or in crucial moments. There is a general photography course as well as ones that cover specific DSLR cameras and how to use them.
Adobe and Graphic Design
I love the simplicity of Canva as much as the next person, but it doesn’t really cut it for professional social media channels. Job posts list the need to know what goes into a good social media post design-wise, as well as how to create them using industry software such as Adobe. Canva has a tendency to “over-design” their templates, and as a result, creators don’t know exactly what makes a design, and they all end up looking very similar. Adobe Creative Suite is another one of those intimidating platforms, but once you start out, you begin to realize the intuitiveness of it from Photoshop to Indesign to Premiere Pro. LinkedIn has a whole Learning Path designed to help you tackle the complexity of the programs and turn it into confidence.
These are just the main hard skills you’ll need to have in your toolbelt in a social media role, but by no means is it exhaustive. Use this list to get inspired and try not to worry too much, because these can also be learned through experience, such as internships or on-campus roles. This is just to get you started on that path, excited and motivated to explore a career in managing social media.
this is a really good post to have to look into what is needed to get a job in this kind of field. thank you for sharing
Hello April! This was really interesting to learn about. I haven’t used Canva until this year and I feel like the excitement of this tool is really cool but as you stated, can look general and average. Professional social media is so much more complex than I realized and it is definitely important to be able to read data for accounts.
Hey April, I really appreciate your blog because it helped me to understand a little bit more of what employers will look for. I think that expanding our fundamental skillset is absolutely necessary when marketing ourselves to potential companies and organizations. In today’s world with how accessible technology is, it is no wonder that the hunt for jobs becomes more competitive as more and more people have access to the same resources and capabilities. My main takeaway from your article is that we should prioritize setting ourselves apart in this current market.
Hey April, I really appreciate your blog because it helped me to understand a little bit more of what employers will look for. I think that expanding our fundamental skillset is absolutely necessary when marketing ourselves to potential companies and organizations. In today’s world with how accessible technology is, it is no wonder that the hunt for jobs becomes more competitive as more and more people have access to the same resources and capabilities. My main takeaway from your article is that we should prioritize setting ourselves apart in this current market.
Hi April! I really appreciated this post as I am a current social media manager and have been really overwhelmed by my responsibilities. I thought that your post offered great resources such as Hootsuite and Learning Path to aid in social media analytics and content creation. I will for sure be using these in the future!