How Do I Become a Social Media Strategist?

Becoming a social media strategist requires the completion of several steps, but you do not need to acquire any formal education at the college or university level. To become a social media strategist, you should learn the various aspects of marketing and advertising, especially those aspects that are related to online networking and marketing initiatives. You will also need to acquire familiarity with current social media networks, the nature of which is changing all of the time. As with any online trend, social media strategy requires that you stay current on the best ways to get a particular message to the highest number of people for each social media network.

You should become proficient in the latest trends regarding social media and networking in order to become a social media strategist, yet you may run into problems because of the constantly shifting landscape of social media and networking trends. For example, the major social media platforms will most likely decrease in prominence as the months and years go by. To become a social media strategist who is effective, you will need to be familiar with emergent networks as well as with the most efficient methods of online marketing.

Marketing strategies that are focused toward an Internet audience differ greatly from more traditional marketing strategies, such as print, radio, and television. While the more traditional marketing platforms are effective for reaching a mass audience, they reach that audience in a passive way. The primary task that you need to accomplish when you become a social media strategist is to find new ways to actively engage a smaller, niche audience with a marketing campaign. This requires you to know where a niche audience happens to reside on a given social network and to craft a tailored initiative to encourage the members of that niche to spread the word throughout the social network.

A large portion of your time as a social media strategist will be spent searching the technology landscape for the latest trends before they completely emerge. Social media works far more quickly than traditional media, and this means that by the time a trend is obvious to the mainstream, its effectiveness as a social media platform for marketing purposes may have already passed its peak. You should read blogs, magazines, and other trade publications to stay abreast of the emerging trends and also follow the gossip that occurs on your current social networks. This gossip likely will lead you to the next trend.