Social Media Expertise for Managers and Entrepreneurs

Social media abilities have developed 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 leaders additionally want social media advertising abilities to assist social groups do their finest work.

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

How have social media supervisor abilities developed?

Find out how to be social media supervisor has modified. A number of years in the past, social media managers had been responding to social community fragmentation and dynamic adjustments in SEO (search engine optimisation). As we speak, they’re optimizing content material creation, managing on-line communities and offering extra customized buyer care—whereas discovering new methods to make use of AI.

Based on The 2025 Sprout Social Index™, an important practical abilities for social media managers are social listening, knowledge storytelling and artistic course. Probably the most worthwhile comfortable abilities embrace undertaking administration, model voice improvement and strategic partnership constructing.

AI helps scale these abilities, however it doesn’t change 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 duties have gotten extra refined and data-driven.

Based on Sprout’s Q1 2025 Pulse Survey, listed here are the highest three specialised roles entrepreneurs want to add to their group.

1. Social media analyst OR social media inventive director
2. Influencer advertising lead
3. Social media operations/undertaking 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 releasing up time for high-level technique and creativity. With AI as their assistant, social practitioners can give attention to what they do finest: creating partaking content material that drives outcomes.

Sprout’s built-in AI performance helps with every thing from sentiment evaluation to predictive analytics, multi functional 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 beneath. 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 best 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 develop into a social media supervisor or develop your profession as one, these are the important thing abilities it’s essential advance your profession. As an alternative of contemplating AI a talent, contemplate it a device that will help you perform the talents beneath extra effectively and successfully. Listed here are 11 important abilities each social media supervisor must thrive.

1. Communication

Sturdy communication abilities are important for advancing your social media profession. From writing a quick 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 recurrently, from groups as numerous because the authorized and artistic departments to followers and even social platform companions.

There are two essential issues to remember in relation to 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 count on from a marketing campaign.
• You additionally want to speak persistently with exterior stakeholders, resembling creators or influencers. Clearly outline expectations, marketing campaign targets and the way you’ll collaborate with them.
• Communication additionally applies to the way you have interaction within the feedback. Sprout’s Improve by AI Help supplies 4 totally different tones for buyer care, serving to you write considerate and on-brand replies quicker.

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 a few of the world’s most inspiring audio system on bettering your social conversations, digital communications and storytelling skills.

2. Writing

Social media managers must be wonderful copywriters who embody and improve their model’s voice on social. From witty, attention-grabbing advert copy to well timed commentary, it is best to know the right way to write concise copy that speaks to your viewers.

The excellent news is that AI will help you draft submit captions quicker. Sprout’s AI Help presents copywriting assist instantly throughout the Compose Window, producing captions in your model’s voice primarily based in your model’s top-performing posts or a customized subject. Value noting: Even if you happen to use AI instruments to generate content material, you continue to want enhancing abilities to evaluate and modify the copy to make sure it aligns along with your expectations and model voice.

Efficient writers know the right way to tailor their writing for various audiences and platforms. For instance, whereas you should utilize 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 providing 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 presents free programs that train you finest practices for writing partaking posts, advert copy and captions for Instagram and Fb.

3. Inventive course

In an oversaturated social panorama, differentiation usually comes right down to inventive course. A robust inventive technique stops you from chasing any pattern and ensures your content material is partaking and audience-centric whereas nonetheless aligning effectively along with your model.

It takes inventive course to:

• Plan and produce revolutionary social media concepts
• Form a constant, platform-specific aesthetic that resonates along with your viewers
• Lead productive brainstorms that deliver out teammates’ finest concepts
• Develop and broaden your model’s voice and visible id
• Information inventive decision-making

An excellent inventive technique additionally considers how audiences have interaction along 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 inventive content material presentation and bridging the hole between inspiration and motion.

Gymshark’s TikTok is a superb instance of inventive course performed effectively. The model has constructed an enormous following by tapping into health tendencies, influencer collaborations and relatable health club tradition humor. The content material feels native to TikTok whereas nonetheless being on-brand for Gymshark.

Assets to refine your inventive course abilities

• Inventive Mornings occasions: Inventive Mornings is a worldwide breakfast occasion collection for the inventive group. Be a part of a neighborhood occasion or the web group to attach with different curious, inventive 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 offer your design groups with extra tangible course.
• Quick Firm and Marketing campaign: These two publications supply considerate commentary and criticism on the inventive advert world. Learn for perception into model and artistic technique, industry-leading campaigns and thought management.
• Sprout Insights Weblog: Take a look at curated articles on content material concepts for quite a lot of social platforms on our weblog.

4. Effectivity and undertaking 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. Growing social media administration abilities like undertaking planning and execution lays the muse for future management roles within the {industry}.

AI received’t change the necessity for undertaking administration, however it will possibly make your processes extra environment friendly. Take Sprout’s ViralPost® function, for instance. It analyzes viewers engagement patterns and robotically schedules posts in your queue at the most effective instances. As an alternative of guessing when to submit, you’ll be able to give attention to technique and execution whereas letting AI deal with the timing.

Among the many many time and undertaking administration instruments out there, 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 utilize to handle your campaigns extra effectively, preserve all of your collaborators on the identical web page, monitor your progress with totally different filters and extra.

Assets to enhance your undertaking administration abilities

• Asana Mission Management: Use this device to plan and handle your tasks from begin to end.
• Pomodoro Method and time-boxing: Typically you’ve bought 50 posts to put in writing and schedule unexpectedly. Setting apart a restricted block of time to work on a process helps preserve issues transferring.
• Social Media Marketing campaign Transient Template: Use this customizable social marketing campaign transient template to arrange marketing campaign particulars, inventive course and different vital directives.

5. Advertising technique

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

Even with the integral function of social throughout a company, proving social media’s ROI generally is a problem for a lot of social media managers. Based on The 2025 Sprout Social Index,™ social groups usually battle to tie their efforts to broader enterprise targets.

That’s the place advertising abilities are available in. 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 technique isn’t purely primarily based on execution; it’s additionally about how your viewers responds. Sprout’s Listening instruments assist you gauge viewers notion by analyzing social conversations so you’ll be able to modify your messaging, optimize campaigns and guarantee your technique resonates.

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

Extra assets

6. Agility

The social panorama strikes quick, and even the best-laid plans can develop into irrelevant in a single day. That’s why realizing when to pivot, experiment or double down is one among 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 must 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 fully to adapt to new tendencies or aggressive forces.

Studying out of your knowledge by listening to buyer suggestions and conserving a pulse in your rivals 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 exhibits the worth of social media intelligence as a talent 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 talent to the following degree by monitoring vital metrics, hashtags, key phrases, emojis and classes collected by means of social media listening and figuring out tendencies and sentiment shifts in social conversations. Whereas this solely helps you along with your listening knowledge, it nonetheless saves you a while sifting by means of knowledge so you’ve got extra time to give attention to refining your technique.

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

This capability to translate knowledge into compelling narratives isn’t only for international manufacturers—it’s a talent 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 odds, you may clarify that engagement dropped 10% in Q1, however you elevated attain by 30% in Q2 by experimenting with posting instances.

Right here’s the right way 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 value financial savings. Lead with the metrics management cares about most.
• Visualize key tendencies: The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ discovered that 45% of selling leaders agree visible knowledge—just like the dashboards and studies you’ll be able to entry by means of Sprout Social’s My Stories 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 work out the right way to optimize your technique accordingly.
• Marketer’s Final Knowledge-Powered Toolkit: This highly effective toolkit is filled with recommendation on the right way to use analytics to your benefit from {industry} leaders together with HubSpot, Litmus, Unbounce, Vidyard and ZoomInfo.
• Knowledge storytelling: This text exhibits you the right way to construct efficient knowledge storytelling so you’ll be able to talk your data-driven technique in a method 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 undertaking consists of influencer advertising or if it’s essential rent freelance professionals. These prices could fluctuate primarily based on the place you’re positioned, the dimensions of the influencer’s following and the way freelance writers or editors cost their charges. You might have to resolve which creator partnerships to prioritize primarily based on out there assets and manufacturing prices.

To plan and allocate your spending correctly, it’s essential first totally perceive the targets of the undertaking and conduct a social spend audit to match the bills from earlier months or quarters. This gives you a greater thought of which bills are a one-time spend and that are ongoing. Sprout’s automated link-tracking function may also assist maximize your price range by robotically including hyperlink monitoring to hyperlinks posted in Sprout. This ensures you’ll be able to precisely measure the ROI of your campaigns and make data-driven choices about the place to take a position 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 a mind for 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 exhibits 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. Practically three-quarters (73%) of customers count on a response inside 24 hours or sooner, which is in step with what our Index reported in 2022 and 2023. Not solely do you must hearken to and perceive your clients’ considerations, however you additionally must be proactive in dealing with emergencies. For instance, when a buyer reached out to United Airways inquiring when their web site can be practical once more, the airline responded instantly with an answer and follow-up query.

As a social media supervisor, you’re the model’s greatest champion. Understanding clients 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 robotically detects the tone of incoming messages, so you’ll be able to prioritize pressing considerations and reply appropriately.

Personalizing interactions additionally makes a distinction. While 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 must dig by means of threads to know the context.

Assets to boost your buyer care abilities

• Buyer Service Coaching Information: Construct important buyer care abilities with this free information from Salesforce. It covers every thing from communication strategies to AI-driven service methods.
• Podcasts: Buyer care begins with buyer understanding. A few of our favourite podcasts on this subject embrace Hidden Mind, Invisibilia and What It Means. Take a look at our full listing 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 replicate your model’s values and persona whereas additionally serving to you stand out, construct belief and create a long-lasting emotional connection along with your viewers. It’s a tall order.

For inspiration, contemplate Oatly, a model identified for its irreverent tone and daring and witty voice. The copy feels prefer it’s coming from a intelligent individual relatively than a model. It usually makes self-aware references to the truth that it’s for advertising functions, however it does it in a method 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, it’s essential know. That is the place social listening is available in. Spike Alerts assist you keep forward of the dialog by flagging sudden adjustments in engagement and sentiment, so you’ll be able to modify your messaging.

Somebody at Oatly should’ve learn our 2025 Index and seen that 93% of customers need to see extra manufacturers combatting misinformation (or they noticed the identical pattern we did…this appears extra seemingly). Both method, 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 performed 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 advanced. An Influencer Advertising marketing campaign administration device, like Sprout’s, streamlines the method by serving to you discover the best companions, coordinate collaborations and measure affect.

Take a look at Pvolve’s collaboration with Jennifer Aniston—it’s a masterclass in influencer advertising performed 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 function from consumer 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 crucial talent. You threat being left behind if you happen to’re not together with it in your technique.

In our Q1 2025 Pulse Survey, 92% of entrepreneurs mentioned 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 optimistic affect is confirmed.

Assets to strengthen your influencer advertising abilities

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

Regardless that they oversee the broader advertising technique, advertising leaders nonetheless want particular social media abilities. Why? It’s exhausting to champion one thing if you happen to don’t perceive it, and social groups must 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 evaluate 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, it’s essential perceive social media tradition, and your group must be fluent in it. Per the Index, 93% of customers agreed it’s vital for manufacturers to maintain up with on-line tradition.

From a technique 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. Hear 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 power 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 be capable 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 talent

• Use social media day by day. Observe manufacturers, meme accounts, creators and trendsetters. Take a look at feedback on fashionable posts to determine how individuals are reacting and why they’re performing effectively.
• Ask your social group to stroll you thru how they flip social listening insights into content material concepts. Understanding this course of will can help you clearly talk how choices 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 varieties of content material floor first—this provides you a glimpse into what’s trending.

2. Facilitating quicker approvals

When a pattern 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 combating useful resource gaps and sluggish approvals.

As a advertising chief, it’s essential create the situations on your social group to do their finest work, and on this case, it means doing all your due diligence whereas nonetheless clearing the way in which for creativity.

Ideas that will help you grasp this talent

• 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 must be? Your social group has a technique, they usually 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 motive customers comply with manufacturers on social media, simply behind product high quality. Producing unique content material is important on your model to be memorable.

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

Ideas that will help you grasp this talent

• Embrace lo-fi video content material. Manufacturing worth and product-centricity are much less vital to customers in accordance with our Index, so make the most of this by encouraging your group to supply extra lo-fi video content material.
• Give the social group extra freedom to experiment with new varieties 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 price it, take 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 inventive, 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 assets that will help you grasp this talent

• Work with the social group to supply a social media model information. This can 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 usually will create some apprehension, however it is going to be price it whenever 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. Based on our Index, customers 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 moving into your first social media supervisor function otherwise you’re already a professional, it’s essential proceed to hone your social media abilities and evolve them alongside AI. Which means enjoying to your strengths whereas pushing your self to develop in new areas.

For instance, if you happen to’re already extremely organized and environment friendly, you’ll be able to spend time growing different abilities, resembling constructing your private model or getting ready to maneuver into folks administration.

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

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