Best Skills Needed to be a Social Media Influencer in 2024

The dramatic evolution of social media skills has characterized the past few years. Over 2 billion individuals are social media users on different platforms such as WhatsApp, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Therefore, it wouldn’t be surprising if you were thinking of becoming a social media marketer, would it? Suppose you are such a person with the desire to become a social media influencer; I guarantee that you have come to the right place.

In this article, I will explore the top skills needed to be a social media influencer in this age where life revolves around social media.

Who is a Social media influencer?

Before we begin with the skills needed to prosper as a social media influencer, irrespective of the industry, it is essential to look at a few terms. For example, what or who is an influencer?

For those who might be wondering who an influencer is, this is someone who influences followers’ buying decisions by leveraging social media channels.

Influencers do not necessarily have to be public figures for them to succeed. The main reason is that launching a career as an influencer is possible without being a celebrity.

Besides, influencers may not consider themselves celebrities in an offline context despite having many social media followers, some even having millions of followers.

You don’t have to worry if you are only an aspiring social media influencer and wondering what the contrast is between influencers and content creators or content creation.

I will highlight a few differences between the two that will help you follow your marketing career with all the clarity you need to stay ahead.

Social media influencers and Content Creators

First, influencers promote other brands by leveraging their large social media followings, while content creators attract potential customers by leveraging their expertise.

Secondly, influencers may directly sell their own products to consumers or earn commissions through affiliate links on social posts. Furthermore, they may endorse or promote other brands in exchange for compensation.

On the other hand, content creators sell products, subscriptions, and services directly to consumers based on how they create content.

Influencers may prioritize creating unscripted, behind-the-scenes content and building relationships with an audience. Contrarily, content creators may prioritize developing high-quality content such as audio or video material.   

Social media marketing

Let’s also take a look at social media marketing. Social media marketing is creating connections, getting more website traffic, increasing brand awareness, nurturing relationships, and making sales using different social media platforms.

Social media marketers could start their personal social media marketing business or work for a digital marketing agency where they get exposed to several brands simultaneously.  

What are the Skills Needed to be a Social media influencer

The following are skills needed to be a social media influencer to prosper in social media marketing by producing high-quality content. But don’t forget your camera and a good phone.

Creativity.

You must have the creativity to continually develop new ideas or interests that can engage your target audience to be exceptional from everybody else.

Creating impactful and successful marketing campaigns in the ever-evolving social media platforms that are becoming more saturated with marketers and users is more challenging. Creativity also means that you must be able to improvise in any situation.

Excellent Communication.

Communication is another skill every social media influencer should have to generate relevant ideas.

It is common knowledge that you must have strong communication skills to effectively engage with your followers or the customers of the organization you represent.

Communication skills are also essential to get along with your boss; suppose you have one and your team.

Flexibility.

You will become even more valuable if you quickly switch between these communication types. One of the best ways to enhance your communication skills is by practicing active listening.

However, it is essential to note that active listening is not just listening to what people say while formulating what to say next. It means noticing what people say, replying affirmatively, and asking follow-up questions.   

Writing Ability.

Most social media skills are dominated by images and video content. However, writing is an important skill a social media influencer must have to succeed in this job.

Writing plays a critical role in a social media marketer’s job profile, whether crafting a tweet or a post, writing a script for a new video, or creating an ad. Writing every day is the best way to improve your writing skills.

And when I talk about writing, I mean writing about everything and anything. You should not limit yourself to writing the same content type if you want to improve your writing skills.

With the rise of AI and various copywriting tools today, writing and generating new ideas has been easy.

Traditional and Digital Marketing

Social media marketing entails a blend of customer support, sales, and marketing.Combined with traditional and digital marketing skills, these skills are essential to succeed in social media marketing.

Time Management and Organization.

Being a social media marketer means going through numerous projects and tasks daily.

For instance, social media marketers need to run reports, create publishing schedules, maintain social media profiles, and track contracts.

As such, good organization and time management is necessary. A schedule and a list are two project management tools to ensure that everything is organized and the time allocated to each task is utilized appropriately. 

Customer Support.

It is not surprising if you wonder why customer support is an essential social media marketing skill. Smart insights suggest that 63% of customers want companies to use social media when offering customer support.

Furthermore, according to research from the Institute of Customer Service, one-third of customers communicate or seek advice from businesses through social media.

Thus, as a social media influencer who might be working for a particular business, you need to know the product that particular business is offering inside out. Doing so will ensure that you provide the best customer support to customers who might have questions concerning how that product works.

Relationship Building.

As the name suggests, social media involves a lot of socialization. As such, any social media marketer must make connections and build relationships.

Forming relationships is essential, considering that 39% of customers only trust brands that interact with them on social media.

Social media influencers talk to many people, so they need to love talking to people and making connections with them.

If you are not a social media influencer yet or an influencer struggling with relationship skills, don’t worry because I got your back. You will only need to follow the following steps:

• You need to develop your active listening and communication skills.
• You must practice empathy by putting yourself in others’ shoes.
• You need to comprehend and cultivate emotional intelligence.
• You need to seek out feedback.   

Design Skills.

Most successful influencers pay great attention to design. As a social media influencer, it is crucial always to create professional and visually appealing content when representing brands online to uphold their reputation and portray a good image to the online community.

Therefore, social media influencers must be familiar with design tools like background erasers to help them create and uphold clear photos on their social media platforms.

Strategic thinking.

Strategic thinking determines how individuals think, evaluate, view, and create the future for others and themselves. Every successful social media marketer must have the ability to identify imminent opportunities and conquer challenges, which is why strategic thinking is necessary.

Strategic thinking involves discovering, gathering, and processing followers’ information. By doing so, social media marketers will be able to comprehend their customers, apart from how these customers move through their marketing funnels.

As such, social media marketers can develop social media tactics and strategies that will boost brand awareness and increase sales.

Analytical skills.

You collect, organize, visualize, and comprehend data through analytical thinking.

As a social media influencer, it will be common for you to be strafed with data daily. This data will help you discover fascinating facts regarding your target audience. It will also help you get feedback on your social media marketing campaigns and Intel regarding your competitors’ actions.

Nevertheless, what you do with that data is what is important. Processing the obtained data and turning it into something you can utilize to develop better social media campaigns will be impossible if you do not have analytical skills.

Playing strategy board games and brain games such as Sudoku, logic puzzles, and the crossword is a great way of improving your analytical thinking skills.

Complaints Management and Customer Service.

Encountering negative interactions on your channel is common irrespective of the effort you put into engaging your followers.

Thus, as a social media influencer, you must be ready for the displeased followers who might want immediate solutions to their reported issues.

You must be patient, understanding, and polite when dealing with customer complaints.    

Content Curation.

Content curation entails selecting content from different sources like social media posts, videos, and blog posts and presenting them meaningfully and cohesively.

Content curation is a way of presenting the most relevant and valuable content to a specific audience engaged after filtering through the massive amount of information available on the internet.

It helps save the audience effort and time since it presents appropriate resources and information in one place.

As a social media influencer, the best thing about content curation is that apart from letting you know what to share, it enables you to understand how and when to share.    

Data Analysis.

Skillful social media managers usually attain their goals by frequently looking at data and employing it in their strategies.

As a social media influencer, the impact can be more significant when your metrics entail AI-enabled qualitative and quantitative data obtained through social listening.

This data offers you tangible customer experience data to share with your cross-functional collaborators and stakeholders, apart from giving you a precise picture of your levels of engagement.

Evaluating qualitative and quantitative data will assist you in making a long-lasting impression on social with the growing importance of social listening and the feverish competition for brand audience interactions.

The analysis will help you pinpoint emerging trends and develop recommendations that align with your customer’s preferences.

Budget Management.

As a social media influencer, you must manage and expertly plan funds for different programs.

For instance, you must manage the content budget, especially if your project involves brand ambassadors or marketing influencers or if you need to employ freelance professionals.

How freelance editors or writers charge their fees, the size of the influencer’s following, and your location are all determining factors of these costs.

You may have to consider the production cost and available resources to prioritize creator partnerships.

It is also essential to carry out a spend audit to equate the expenses from previous quarters and exhaustively comprehend the project’s objectives to plan and allocate your spending wisely.

Doing so will give you a better idea of the ongoing expenses and those that are a one-time spend.    

Finale Note.

Social media is an important marketing channel that regularly requires hard work and dedication.

As a social media marketer, you are accountable for how your brand posits itself across various social media platforms and its performance.

But the good thing is that the outlined social media marketing skills above are all you need to kick off a social media marketing business and achieve success.