SMM Specialist: Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

An SMM specialist is a person who promotes websites, brands, companies in the social media. This profession is still very young (as social networks have appeared not so long ago) therefore there is no clear list of knowledge, skills and abilities required to plan and carry out efficient social media marketing campaigns. Requirements are often vague enough, which may lead to misunderstandings between SMM specialists and their clients.

Unfortunately, there is a popular opinion that anyone who has an extensive network of social contacts can try their hand in social media optimization and marketing. In reality, the number of one's contacts in popular social networks is not the most important professionalism criterion for a social media marketing specialist. A genuine professional in this field needs quite a lot of specific knowledge and skills in order to promote his clients' or his own projects in the social media really effectively.

Social media marketing (SMM) is a general term that refers to an entire set of activities where various social media (mainly social networking websites) are used as the main channels for promoting websites or companies on the Web. SMM specialists take full responsibility for successful realization of such activities and, therefore, for achievement of positive results in solving a number of important business tasks.

In order to make up the list of required knowledge, skills and abilities for such specialists, you should first of all have a closer look at their daily routine. The main duties of a social media marketing professional may include (but are not limited to): posting interesting thematic content in communities or on public pages of the companies they promote; communicating with the members of these communities (or the subscribers of the public pages); drawing new members/subscribers while retaining old ones; reacting to the mentions of the company in social media.

Along with carrying out activities that are directly related to the company's presence in social networks, SMM specialists often have to perform a number of general management and marketing functions. They develop effective strategies for companies' behavior in social networks, calculate SMM campaign budget, monitor the course of social media marketing campaigns, keep records etc. As a result, SMM professionals are kind of universal workers who possess the qualities of several specialist at once. It helps them to promote companies and their sites in social media with maximum efficiency.

Based on the basic duties described above, the list of required knowledge, skills and abilities of a good SMM specialist should include the following principal skills:

• proper positioning of communities and public pages;
• managing advertising tools in social networks;
• drawing up and optimizing advertising budget;
• creating and promoting events in social networks;
• working with viral content in social media;
• quick reacting to mentions in social media and neutralizing negative attitude;
• using popular SMM tools and techniques;
• boosting members' activity in groups (communities);
• working with web analytics tools for evaluating the efficiency of social media optimization and marketing.

Of course, this list does not include all the skills, abilities and knowledge that are necessary for a good SMM specialist. However, even this brief list perfectly illustrates the importance of thorough choice of a specialist who will promote your company and/or its website in social media.