Digital marketing is currently one of the most exciting and dynamic industries to work in, but are you made of the right material to take a job at a social media agency? In this article we’ll discuss some of the main traits that make up a successful social marketer.

Customer Service

Twitter and Facebook are both very heavily customer service based, since it’s a very public facing role. As a social media executive, you will be in contact with hundreds, if not thousands of fans or followers per day. As a result, many successful executives who get a job at a social media agency come from a customer service background. This could include people who took their first jobs at supermarkets, had call centre roles or worked at the customer service desk in retail. Being able to empathise with other people and connect with them are key, which is why outgoing people are often successful in social media roles where customer service is key.

A PR background

Public relations is another industry that spawns a great deal of effective digital marketers. This is because the two roles have a fair bit of overlap. As a PR executive, you must be able to create stories and headlines out of a range of topics, maintain the client’s integrity and effectively manage their reputation. The same is true in a social media agency. An important part of Facebook or Twitter management is crafting thoughtful and interesting status updates for the client’s brand.

If you’re a PR executive or PR assistant at the moment, making the jump to social networking is a relatively small one. Essentially, it’s very similar methods using different tools, which is why some of the best social marketers have evolved their skills from PR based ones.

Journalism

Journalists also make great digital marketers. A top social media agency is heavily reliant on high quality content that reads well and delivers value to their client’s fans. This content includes not just snappy status updates, but also longer articles and blogs on behalf of the client. This content must be informative, engaging and effective in turning a soft lead into a hard lead, or in other words a fan or follower into a leadreference.

If you have good writing skills or currently are a journalist, you’d be ideally suited to the content creation side of online marketing and day to day social updates.

Analytical backgrounds

The final piece in the puzzle in becoming a successful marketer for a social media agency is having an analytical side. Knowing what’s working and what isn’t is crucial in any social media role, so to be successful you need to be able to analyse and reflect on strategy and make appropriate adjustments to keep the campaign going successfully.

As a result, people with a background in science at school or SEO executives make great online marketers. Often, these are the best at leading a social strategy due to their ability to decipher detailed page analytics and trace successes back to individual status updates.

The other reason why analytical people make great digital marketers it the increasingly complex tools being used to measure social media ROI. Social Networking now has to be integrated into a wider strategy including SEO and PPC. This means the ideal social media team can be made up of a group of people from a range of these backgrounds discussed, with each being able to specialise in a different area of the campaign thanks to their specific skill set.