It will be too late if you don’t update: How many skills do you know about the necessary skills for social media marketers going overseas?

Social media is an ever-changing "battlefield". This characteristic requires social media marketing practitioners to change their marketing thinking at any time and constantly master new skills in order to reap the success of personal career development and achieve brand goals.

Recently, LinkedIn launched the "Labor Data" website, which displays real-time changes in various labor data in various industries through relevant information on corporate recruitment and professional development on the platform. Among them, comparing last year with 2015, the professional skill requirements for senior social media marketing positions such as "social media marketing director" have undergone tremendous changes: in 2021, the 10 required skills for "social media marketing director" Seven of the skills were completely absent in 2015.

In other words, with the continuous development and evolution of social media platforms, brand needs, user characteristics, and marketing technologies, the requirements for social media marketing practitioners have undergone tremendous changes.

This article will focus on these changes in professional skills, and explore the trends in social media marketing behind them, and discuss with all overseas social media marketers how to continuously improve their business capabilities and promote brand social media in the ever-changing marketing environment. Achievement of marketing goals.

01

Trend 1: "Blogging" and "Public Speaking" have disappeared completely

By comparing the top skills required of social media marketing leaders in 2015 and 2021, we can see that writing blog posts and public speaking skills have disappeared from the top skills.

Such changes are actually well understood.

The loss of "public speaking" is no doubt a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been an important capability for leaders in various industries for a long time, but with the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, offline activities have shifted to online, and this capability has become less important.

The disappearance of "blog" stems from the increasing importance of social media in people's access to information.

Around 2015, people's love for social media and blogging sites was evenly matched. As a social media marketing leader, you need to share in-depth and readable blog articles on social media, and use engaging content to drive traffic to your website or get people's attention and reading time;

With the continuous innovation of social media platform technology and display forms, people are attracted by the dazzling social media that can harvest a lot of information in a short period of time. The era of "fragmented reading" has come, and people's attention is gradually focused on social media. , so the ability to write "long speeches" is no longer important.

As a leader and professional practitioner of social media marketing, the skills you need to master are how to create content that responds quickly to hot spots or simply directly arouses people's interest while complying with the norms of social media platforms.

The one-stop "posting" function of marketing has built-in content specifications of mainstream social media platforms, and intelligent one-click posting can be performed on the same interface, which helps to quickly improve the response speed of your social media content.

02

Trend 2: Instagram "replaces" Facebook

The most important platform for social media marketing leaders in 2015 was Facebook, and in 2021 that platform becomes Instagram.

In 2015, the number of active Facebook users reached 1.59 billion, occupying the position of a mainstream social media platform in every country and market it covers. At that time, the number of Instagram users was only 400 million, which was still in the emerging stage of development. Therefore, for brands and social media marketing practitioners in 2015, mastering Facebook marketing skills is crucial.

But at the same time, data from 2015 shows that Instagram is becoming popular among young users, and socializing with pictures has gradually become a new popular trend. In 2021, Instagram has become the most important platform for social media marketing leaders.

It is worth noting that TikTok will show explosive global growth in 2021, showing a leading edge in the number of users and active time, as well as its leading role in pop culture.

But from the overall perspective of social media marketing, brand social media marketing on TikTok is still in the "early adopters" and "exploration" stages, but Instagram is a mature platform for socializing pictures and videos, and the brand's budget and marketing focus are still on Instagram. As TikTok becomes more and more rich in brand marketing technology and support, and becomes more and more attractive to global users, TikTok will gradually become one of the platforms that social media marketing leaders must learn and master.

03

Trend 3: The Importance of Graphic Design and SaaS Increases

Among the skills that social media marketing leaders need to master in 2021 we see the emergence of "graphic design" and Canva. Graphic design is a skill, and Canva is an online design SaaS platform born in 2017.

Why have graphic design skills become so important for social media marketers? This is due to the fact that platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat are all social media platforms that focus on visual content (pictures and videos). In people's quick browsing of social media, visual content is more likely to attract users' attention-only with good graphic design ability, or graphic aesthetic and creative ability, can your brand content stand out in the information flow.

The "Material" function of Marketing Cloud supports aggregated viewing of popular content on social media platforms by industry and keywords. At the same time, you can add excellent content to your collection to obtain relevant inspiration in a centralized manner.

Why is the SaaS platform a skill requirement? This is because the expertise of social media marketers is undoubtedly "marketing". If you want to make your marketing plan better implemented and executed more efficiently, you need the support of software and services to complete it. Graphic design SaaS like Canva helps social media marketing practitioners gain stronger design capabilities, while social media marketing data management SaaS like Marketing Cloud can help everyone gain stronger data insights, analysis capabilities and comprehensively improve social media platforms brand influence.

epilogue

As mentioned earlier, LinkedIn is currently disclosing that the skills required of social media marketing leaders in 2021 are different from those in 2015. According to the changes in the importance of social media platforms and the changing trend of users' browsing habits of social media content, we believe that in the future social media marketing skills, content planning, creation and editing capabilities on short video platforms represented by TikTok It will become a new important ability that needs to be mastered.

At present, Marketing Cloud has been connected to TikTok official API, which supports brands to monitor data and publish posts on their own TikTok business accounts. As a partner and supporter of all overseas marketing companies and all overseas marketers, we will continue to connect to more emerging social media platforms and enrich more data dimensions to help your overseas social media marketing effect to a higher level and further. . If you want to start using a marketer now, you can leave your contact information, and we will arrange someone to get in touch with you.