Social Media Expertise for Managers and Entrepreneurs

Social media abilities have advanced dramatically since AI has come into the image. To maintain tempo with these adjustments, social media managers should develop specialised abilities that complement AI-driven developments in content material technique, analytics and viewers engagement. Advertising and marketing leaders additionally want social media advertising abilities to assist social groups do their greatest work.

On this article, we’ll discover how AI has reshaped the position of social media managers. Plus, we’ll checklist the social media abilities social media managers and advertising leaders should grasp to remain aggressive.

How have social media supervisor abilities advanced?

Learn how to be a superb social media supervisor has modified. A couple of years in the past, social media managers have been responding to social community fragmentation and dynamic adjustments in search engine marketing (search engine optimization). As we speak, they’re optimizing content material creation, managing on-line communities and offering extra personalised buyer care—whereas discovering new methods to make use of AI.

In accordance with The 2025 Sprout Social Index™, a very powerful purposeful abilities for social media managers are social listening, knowledge storytelling and artistic course. Probably the most priceless delicate abilities embody challenge administration, model voice improvement and strategic partnership constructing.

AI helps scale these abilities, but it surely doesn’t exchange them, particularly as a result of social practitioners want lots of them to supply unique content material.

How social media supervisor abilities have modified since AI emerged

Talent specialization is the largest general change AI has introduced on. A 2024 evaluation of fifty social media job descriptions discovered that social media job tasks have gotten extra subtle and data-driven.

In accordance with Sprout’s Q1 2025 Pulse Survey, listed below are the highest three specialised roles entrepreneurs want to add to their group.

1. Social media analyst OR social media artistic director
2. Influencer advertising lead
3. Social media operations/challenge supervisor

AI is altering the sport, however social media managers are nonetheless calling the pictures. By leveraging AI-powered instruments for duties like scheduling and writing alt textual content, they’re streamlining workflows and liberating up time for high-level technique and creativity. With AI as their assistant, social practitioners can deal with what they do greatest: creating partaking content material that drives outcomes.

Sprout’s built-in AI performance helps with every part from sentiment evaluation to predictive analytics, multi function platform, empowering social media groups to anticipate tendencies and optimize their methods in real-time.

If you wish to sharpen your abilities for 2025 and past, watch the video under. We function our prime 5 abilities for the following few years, together with AI and knowledge storytelling.

Degree up your social media abilities with the appropriate social instruments

As you grasp the talents on this article, begin leveraging a social media administration device to additional your social success.

Check out Sprout social with a free trial, or schedule a demo to study extra.

11 social media supervisor abilities to additional your profession

If you wish to change into a social media supervisor or develop your profession as one, these are the important thing abilities you should advance your profession. As a substitute of contemplating AI a ability, think about it a device that will help you perform the talents under extra effectively and successfully. Listed here are 11 important abilities each social media supervisor must thrive.

1. Communication

Robust communication abilities are important for advancing your social media profession. From writing a short to presenting marketing campaign insights, social media managers should successfully talk concepts to a variety of stakeholders.

Communication abilities are much more indispensable when you think about the breadth of inner and exterior audiences social media managers collaborate with repeatedly, from groups as numerous because the authorized and artistic departments to followers and even social platform companions.

There are two essential issues to bear in mind in the case of communication:

• When speaking internally, articulate your concepts and plans to decision-makers and cross-functional companions. This might be about your content material distribution plan or the income affect you anticipate from a marketing campaign.
• You additionally want to speak persistently with exterior stakeholders, resembling creators or influencers. Clearly outline expectations, marketing campaign objectives and the way you’ll collaborate with them.
• Communication additionally applies to the way you interact within the feedback. Sprout’s Improve by AI Help offers 4 totally different tones for buyer care, serving to you write considerate and on-brand replies sooner.

Assets to construct your communication abilities

• Presentation template: Use this social media technique deck template to successfully talk your social technique to the management group.
• TED Talks on communication: Hear from among the world’s most inspiring audio system on enhancing your social conversations, digital communications and storytelling skills.

2. Writing

Social media managers need to be wonderful copywriters who embody and improve their model’s voice on social. From witty, attention-grabbing advert copy to well timed commentary, you need to know learn how to write concise copy that speaks to your viewers.

The excellent news is that AI might help you draft submit captions sooner. Sprout’s AI Help provides copywriting help instantly throughout the Compose Window, producing captions in your model’s voice primarily based in your model’s top-performing posts or a customized matter. Value noting: Even in the event you use AI instruments to generate content material, you continue to want enhancing abilities to evaluation and regulate the copy to make sure it aligns together with your expectations and model voice.

Efficient writers know learn how to tailor their writing for various audiences and platforms. For instance, whereas you should use as much as 2,200 characters in your Instagram captions, knowledge has proven that the most partaking size is between 1-50 characters.

Assets to assist with writing

• Grammarly: This free device checks your grammar and proofreads your content material whereas supplying you with prompts to make your copy extra compelling.
• Hemingway Editor: Use this web site and app to make your writing extra concise and readable. Whereas it’s geared extra towards long-form writing, you may also use it to create impactful social media posts.
• Meta Blueprint: Meta provides free programs that train you greatest practices for writing partaking posts, advert copy and captions for Instagram and Fb.

3. Artistic course

In an oversaturated social panorama, differentiation typically comes right down to artistic course. A robust artistic technique stops you from chasing any development and ensures your content material is partaking and audience-centric whereas nonetheless aligning nicely together with your model.

It takes artistic course to:

• Plan and produce progressive social media concepts
• Form a constant, platform-specific aesthetic that resonates together with your viewers
• Lead productive brainstorms that deliver out teammates’ greatest concepts
• Develop and increase your model’s voice and visible identification
• Information artistic decision-making

An ideal artistic technique additionally considers how audiences interact together with your content material throughout platforms. Utilizing a device like SproutLink turns your bio hyperlink right into a clickable touchdown web page, permitting for extra artistic content material presentation and bridging the hole between inspiration and motion.

Gymshark’s TikTok is an excellent instance of artistic course accomplished nicely. The model has constructed a large following by tapping into health tendencies, influencer collaborations and relatable gymnasium tradition humor. The content material feels native to TikTok whereas nonetheless being on-brand for Gymshark.

Assets to refine your artistic course abilities

• Artistic Mornings occasions: Artistic Mornings is a world breakfast occasion sequence for the artistic group. Be a part of a neighborhood occasion or the web group to attach with different curious, artistic leaders in advertising, design and social.
• Vidyo: This easy-to-use AI device helps time and resource-strapped groups create social-ready short-form movies from longer content material.
• Illustroke: Use this device to create fast AI-generated illustrations from textual content prompts to supply your design groups with extra tangible course.
• Quick Firm and Marketing campaign: These two publications supply considerate commentary and criticism on the artistic advert world. Learn for perception into model and artistic technique, industry-leading campaigns and thought management.
• Sprout Insights Weblog: Try curated articles on content material concepts for a wide range of social platforms on our weblog.

4. Effectivity and challenge administration

As a social media supervisor, not solely do you must conceptualize campaigns and distribution rhythms, however you even have to steer and execute these plans from begin to end. Typically, this entails using a social community supervisor app to streamline workflows and maximize effectivity. Creating social media administration abilities like challenge planning and execution lays the muse for future management roles within the {industry}.

AI gained’t exchange the necessity for challenge administration, however it could possibly make your processes extra environment friendly. Take Sprout’s ViralPost® function, for instance. It analyzes viewers engagement patterns and routinely schedules posts in your queue at the perfect instances. As a substitute of guessing when to submit, you may deal with technique and execution whereas letting AI deal with the timing.

Among the many many time and challenge administration instruments accessible, resembling Asana or Monday.com, a social media calendar is tremendous useful for managing your totally different social duties. Don’t have time to create your individual social media calendar? Social administration platforms like Sprout even have an intuitive social media calendar you should use to handle your campaigns extra effectively, preserve all of your collaborators on the identical web page, observe your progress with totally different filters and extra.

Assets to enhance your challenge administration abilities

• Asana Venture Management: Use this device to plan and handle your tasks from begin to end.
• Pomodoro Approach and time-boxing: Generally you’ve bought 50 posts to jot down and schedule unexpectedly. Setting apart a restricted block of time to work on a process helps preserve issues transferring.
• Social Media Marketing campaign Temporary Template: Use this customizable social marketing campaign temporary template to prepare marketing campaign particulars, artistic course and different vital directives.

5. Advertising and marketing technique

Social sits on the intersection of promoting, buyer expertise and gross sales. It’s additionally a supply of priceless enterprise intelligence.

Even with the integral position of social throughout a company, proving social media’s ROI could be a problem for a lot of social media managers. In accordance with The 2025 Sprout Social Index,™ social groups typically wrestle to tie their efforts to broader enterprise objectives.

That’s the place advertising abilities are available. Understanding how social intersects with different techniques helps you create social media methods that drive actual enterprise affect and showcase these efforts to advertising leaders. However the success of a method isn’t purely primarily based on execution; it’s additionally about how your viewers responds. Sprout’s Listening instruments allow you to gauge viewers notion by analyzing social conversations so you may regulate your messaging, optimize campaigns and guarantee your technique resonates.

When mixed with social intelligence, sturdy advertising abilities help you form conversations, proving the true worth of social to your group.

Extra sources

6. Agility

The social panorama strikes quick, and even the best-laid plans can change into irrelevant in a single day. That’s why realizing when to pivot, experiment or double down is one in all many must-have social media marketer abilities.

Being agile isn’t nearly reacting to tendencies or dealing with buyer suggestions in actual time. It additionally means realizing when to regulate your long-term social media technique.

Social methods need to be as dynamic because the platforms they’re executed on. As a social media supervisor, it’s vital to experiment with totally different techniques and even shake up your technique completely to adapt to new tendencies or aggressive forces.

Studying out of your knowledge by listening to buyer suggestions and protecting a pulse in your opponents in a well timed method makes you a extra nimble and hands-on social marketer.

Assets that will help you keep agile

7. Social media intelligence

In our 2023 State of Social Media report, 90% of enterprise leaders agreed that their firm’s success relied on how successfully they used social media knowledge. This stat reveals the worth of social media intelligence as a ability for social media managers.

What’s social media intelligence? In brief, it’s the power to research uncooked knowledge and spot patterns and insights. AI-powered instruments like Sprout’s Analyze by AI Help, take this ability to the following stage by monitoring vital metrics, hashtags, key phrases, emojis and classes collected by way of social media listening and figuring out tendencies and sentiment shifts in social conversations. Whereas this solely helps you together with your listening knowledge, it nonetheless saves you a while sifting by way of knowledge so you will have extra time to deal with refining your technique.

The story of Spotify Wrapped is a first-rate instance of what’s doable while you use social media intelligence to drive technique. Spotify’s knowledge confirmed that customers have been organically sharing their listening habits on the finish of every yr. The model turned this perception into a personalised, sharable expertise that’s now its most recognizable advertising initiative. By analyzing viewers conversations, engagement patterns and sentiment, Spotify remodeled uncooked social knowledge into advertising gold.

This means to translate knowledge into compelling narratives isn’t only for world manufacturers—it’s a ability each social media supervisor wants.

To correctly talk the affect of social intelligence to management, you must inform the tales behind the numbers. For instance, as a substitute of simply presenting the chances, you would possibly clarify that engagement dropped 10% in Q1, however you elevated attain by 30% in Q2 by experimenting with posting instances.

Right here’s learn how to use knowledge storytelling to deliver your social intelligence takeaways to life:

• Tie insights to income: Present how engagement, site visitors or social sentiment interprets into conversions, retention or price financial savings. Lead with the metrics management cares about most.
• Visualize key tendencies: The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ discovered that 45% of promoting leaders agree visible knowledge—just like the dashboards and experiences you may entry by way of Sprout Social’s My Experiences function—helps safe social media funding.

Assets for constructing your social intelligence abilities

• Social Listening Workbook: This workbook helps you get clear insights into what audiences take into consideration your model and determine learn how to optimize your technique accordingly.
• Marketer’s Final Information-Powered Toolkit: This highly effective toolkit is stuffed with recommendation on learn how to use analytics to your benefit from {industry} leaders together with HubSpot, Litmus, Unbounce, Vidyard and ZoomInfo.
• Information storytelling: This text reveals you learn how to construct efficient knowledge storytelling so you may talk your data-driven technique in a means that resonates with members in and across the advertising group.

8. Finances administration

As a social media supervisor, you must expertly plan and handle funds for numerous applications, together with natural and paid media spending.

This consists of managing the price range for content material, particularly in case your challenge consists of influencer advertising or if you should rent freelance professionals. These prices could fluctuate primarily based on the place you might be situated, the dimensions of the influencer’s following and the way freelance writers or editors cost their charges. You’ll have to determine which creator partnerships to prioritize primarily based on accessible sources and manufacturing prices.

To plan and allocate your spending properly, you should first completely perceive the objectives of the challenge and conduct a social spend audit to match the bills from earlier months or quarters. This gives you a greater concept of which bills are a one-time spend and that are ongoing. Sprout’s automated link-tracking function also can assist maximize your price range by routinely including hyperlink monitoring to hyperlinks posted in Sprout. This ensures you may precisely measure the ROI of your campaigns and make data-driven selections about the place to speculate your price range.

Assets to counterpoint your social media abilities for budgeting

9. Buyer care

Buyer care is a kind of social media abilities that mixes customer support, folks abilities and one eye on uncovering alternatives. That’s why growing a social buyer care technique is an integral a part of a social media supervisor’s job description. Our Index reveals that 73% of social customers will merely purchase from a competitor if a model doesn’t reply on social.

Your social media response time must be dialed in. Almost three-quarters (73%) of shoppers anticipate a response inside 24 hours or sooner, which is in keeping with what our Index reported in 2022 and 2023. Not solely do you must hearken to and perceive your prospects’ considerations, however you additionally should be proactive in dealing with emergencies. For instance, when a buyer reached out to United Airways inquiring when their web site could be purposeful once more, the airline responded instantly with an answer and follow-up query.

As a social media supervisor, you’re the model’s largest champion. Understanding prospects and their views means that you can create significant interactions that strengthen group belief. If you need assist streamlining this, Sprout’s Sentiment for Messages routinely detects the tone of incoming messages, so you may prioritize pressing considerations and reply appropriately.

Personalizing interactions additionally makes a distinction. Once you reference dialog historical past, you flip on a regular basis exchanges into relationship-building alternatives. Summarize by AI Help simplifies this by summarizing previous interactions, so that you don’t need to dig by way of threads to know the context.

Assets to reinforce your buyer care abilities

• Buyer Service Coaching Information: Construct important buyer care abilities with this free information from Salesforce. It covers every part from communication strategies to AI-driven service methods.
• Podcasts: Buyer care begins with buyer understanding. A few of our favourite podcasts on this matter embody Hidden Mind, Invisibilia and What It Means. Try our full checklist of favourite podcasts right here.

10. Model voice improvement

Your model voice is greater than what you say—it’s the way you say it. A robust, constant model voice has to mirror your model’s values and character whereas additionally serving to you stand out, construct belief and create a long-lasting emotional connection together with your viewers. It’s a tall order.

For inspiration, think about Oatly, a model identified for its irreverent tone and daring and witty voice. The copy feels prefer it’s coming from a intelligent individual reasonably than a model. It typically makes self-aware references to the truth that it’s for advertising functions, but it surely does it in a means that makes the viewers really feel like they’re in on the joke.

A part of crafting an superior model voice is ensuring it resonates. In case your viewers reacts unexpectedly to a marketing campaign or if sentiment shifts in a single day, you should know. That is the place social listening is available in. Spike Alerts allow you to keep forward of the dialog by flagging sudden adjustments in engagement and sentiment, so you may regulate your messaging.

Somebody at Oatly should’ve learn our 2025 Index and seen that 93% of shoppers need to see extra manufacturers combatting misinformation (or they noticed the identical development we did…this appears extra probably). Both means, Oatly is proof {that a} well-crafted model voice works.

Assets that will help you study model voice

• Model voice: This text has ideas that will help you develop your model’s voice.
• Grammarly’s Tone Detector: A free device to assist lock in model voice consistency by making certain your writing matches your supposed model voice.

11. Influencer advertising

When accomplished proper, influencer advertising builds credibility, will increase engagement and drives long-term model progress—however provided that it feels genuine and strategic. Managing influencer relationships, monitoring efficiency and making certain content material stays on-brand might be complicated. An Influencer Advertising and marketing marketing campaign administration device, like Sprout’s, streamlines the method by serving to you discover the appropriate companions, coordinate collaborations and measure affect.

Take a look at Pvolve’s collaboration with Jennifer Aniston—it’s a masterclass in influencer advertising accomplished proper. Aniston organically found the model whereas recovering from a again damage, making her endorsement really feel real and aligned with Pvolve’s message: “Break a sweat, not your physique.”

Later, Pvolve strategically elevated her position from person to collaborator, turning an genuine model connection into a strong advertising asset. By leveraging her affect, the model skyrocketed its social media consciousness and positioned itself as a pacesetter in low-impact health. This instance illustrates why influencer advertising is a vital ability. You danger being left behind in the event you’re not together with it in your technique.

In our Q1 2025 Pulse Survey, 92% of entrepreneurs stated that sponsored influencer content material outperforms natural content material posted on their model accounts for attain. That quantity dips to 82% for B2C entrepreneurs, however nonetheless, the constructive affect is confirmed.

Assets to strengthen your influencer advertising abilities

4 social media advertising abilities for advertising leaders to construct higher groups

Although they oversee the broader advertising technique, advertising leaders nonetheless want particular social media abilities. Why? It’s onerous to champion one thing in the event you don’t perceive it, and social groups should be constructed by somebody who will get it. Because the hyperlink between management and the social media group, advertising leaders want to have the ability to talk the worth of social media and shut information gaps.

Let’s evaluation the social media abilities entrepreneurs must construct profitable groups and belief with management.

1. Understanding social media tradition

Social media has its personal tradition, with its personal language, behaviors and expectations. If the objective is to be the largest model in your {industry} on social media, you should perceive social media tradition, and your group must be fluent in it. Per the Index, 93% of shoppers agreed it’s vital for manufacturers to maintain up with on-line tradition.

From a method perspective, understanding social media tradition minimizes the danger of showing out of contact. Nonetheless, you even have to know your viewers, particularly contemplating totally different generations use social media otherwise. Pay attention and take cues out of your viewers to create content material that resonates. AI-powered social media listening instruments like Sprout’s assist your group do that.

Gritty is an ideal instance of what occurs when manufacturers really perceive social media tradition. When the Philadelphia Flyers launched their offbeat, googly-eyed mascot, the web initially rejected him. However as a substitute of resisting the memes, the Flyers embraced them, letting Gritty’s chaotic vitality shine. Gritty proves that when manufacturers cease forcing relatability and begin talking the web’s language, they’ll construct lasting model affinity.

When hiring and main your social media group, the extra you perceive on-line tradition, the higher you’ll have the ability to spot expertise that will get it. It’ll additionally make explaining the worth of social media simpler.

Ideas that will help you grasp this ability

• Use social media day by day. Observe manufacturers, meme accounts, creators and trendsetters. Take a look at feedback on standard posts to determine how individuals are reacting and why they’re performing nicely.
• Ask your social group to stroll you thru how they flip social listening insights into content material concepts. Understanding this course of will help you clearly talk how selections are made to management, constructing belief within the social group’s technique.
• Use TikTok, YouTube and Instagram’s search capabilities. Social media search is changing Google for youthful audiences. Search a subject and see what kinds of content material floor first—this offers you a glimpse into what’s trending.

2. Facilitating sooner approvals

When a development takes maintain, a model solely has a day or two to reply. Sadly, many alternatives are missed due to prolonged approval processes.

74% of executives surveyed for The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ say they belief their social group, however social entrepreneurs nonetheless report fighting useful resource gaps and gradual approvals.

As a advertising chief, you should create the circumstances in your social group to do their greatest work, and on this case, it means doing all your due diligence whereas nonetheless clearing the best way for creativity.

Ideas that will help you grasp this ability

• Revisit your social media approval course of. When was the final time you optimized your social media approval course of?
• Think about using a social media administration device. Utilizing a platform like Sprout helps handle workflows and pace up decision-making.
• Scale back extra oversight. Are there folks concerned within the approval course of who don’t should be? Your social group has a method, and so they want your assist constructing govt belief and eradicating bottlenecks in order that they’ll implement it to its fullest potential.

3. Supporting unique content material creation

The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ discovered that originality is the second-leading cause shoppers comply with manufacturers on social media, simply behind product high quality. Producing unique content material is important in your model to be memorable.

In case you’re questioning what sort of unique content material to supply, we surveyed our ICYMI group of entrepreneurs and creators about the way forward for social media for 2025, and 47% (probably the most of any matter) stated they have been specializing in short-form video (60 seconds or much less).

Ideas that will help you grasp this ability

• Embrace lo-fi video content material. Manufacturing worth and product-centricity are much less vital to shoppers in accordance with our Index, so benefit from this by encouraging your group to supply extra lo-fi video content material.
• Give the social group extra freedom to experiment with new kinds of social media content material. Allow them to experiment with new codecs—interactive polls, behind-the-scenes footage or audience-driven content material—to find what really engages your group.

4. Constructing a definite model voice

A compelling model voice does wonders to cease the scroll and make your model recognizable past the visuals.

If you need proof that crafting a definite model voice is value it, have a look at Duolingo’s social media story. In 2021, Zaria Parvez requested if she may revive the model’s inactive TikTok account. She was a junior advertising group member on the time.

She didn’t have a lot of a price range, so she bought artistic, took dangers, hopped on tendencies and gave the model an unhinged and hilarious voice on social media. Duolingo has grown from 50 thousand followers on TikTok to over 15 million due to its quirky model voice.

Ideas and sources that will help you grasp this ability

• Work with the social group to supply a social media fashion information. It will assist your social group outline precisely how your model seems on social media, together with tone and voice.
• Put together to deal with questions and considerations. Experimenting with a daring model voice typically will create some apprehension, however it will likely be value it while you strike gold and create superfans. Belief your social group to adapt messaging primarily based on viewers engagement.
• Keep away from model voices which might be sexually express or overly company. In accordance with our Index, shoppers are bored with these model voices.

Construct your social media abilities to remodel your profession

Social is a profession path of lifelong studying. Whether or not you’re entering into your first social media supervisor position otherwise you’re already a professional, you should proceed to hone your social media abilities and evolve them alongside AI. Meaning taking part in to your strengths whereas pushing your self to develop in new areas.

For instance, in the event you’re already extremely organized and environment friendly, you may spend time growing different abilities, resembling constructing your private model or making ready to maneuver into folks administration.

Specializing in a particular social media ability shall be key to your subsequent profession transfer. In case you’re phenomenal at knowledge evaluation, maybe you change into an distinctive knowledge storyteller. Or, if content material creation is your forte, you would possibly need to upskill at video content material creation. No matter your social media abilities are, there’s room to develop.

Try The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ to learn to stand out regardless of social media saturation and construct next-generation social groups.