Strategic Digital Communications
Congratulations to Roxanne Deevey, the lucky winner of the newly released business book: How Clients Buy: A Practical Guide to Business Development For Consulting And Professional Services.
Last month Roxanne entered a competition that asked readers to share their own business development tips in the comments.
There’s a new reader competition coming up so watch this space for your chance to win!
Anyone can claim to be a social media expert, but it’s difficult to tell who’s the real deal and who are the fakers. Start by looking for a professional with Hootsuite Social Marketing Certification. 
Hootsuite Social Marketing Certification is industry-recognized and showcases the digital expertise and credentials a marketing communications professional has across all online channels. To get the online certificate, it takes passing a 60-question online exam testing knowledge of the core principles of social media marketing.
I’ve partnered with TRUEdotACADEMY to provide training to support people taking the exam.
The TRUEdotACADEMY Social Media Foundations course covers all aspects of the Hootsuite Social Marketing Certification exam. Participants learn everything from how to optimize profiles on various social channels and engage with audiences, to developing content strategy and effective use of advertising.
The course provides indepth discussion of social media strategy and concepts and case study examples based on my own experience in providing social media consulting and services. This provides context and the opportunity to go deep into the details…something that online video courses just don’t provide. This is a live, supportive learning experience. The concentrated focus means participants are fully prepared to take the exam in just two days. And after the exam, The TRUEdot team and I will continue to support participants as they implement the learning at their workplaces with coaching and mentoring.
Industry certification separates the wheat from the chaff in social marketing expertise. Look for certification when recruiting team members or contracting a consultant or agency to get the best, most-knowledgeable talent.
Set your team up for success by supporting them through certification with this intensive, effective training.
Training for Facebook Blueprint Certification gives marcoms pros the skills to maximize business on Facebook. It provides the confidence (and credentials!) to promote a message, product or service by understanding who, when and how to connect – strategically and effectively.
There are currently two certifications for two specific areas of expertise – Facebook Certified Buying Professional and Facebook Certified Planning Professional. Now, for the first time in Ottawa, marketing and communications pros can prepare for both of these exams by taking the Facebook Marketing Foundations course offered by TRUEdotACADEMY.
Certification requires advanced competency in the following:
Those who pass the exam, get the badge to prove it. This digital badge can be shared readily on social media, websites or even on a resume and email signature. It’s certifiable proof that someone is skilled and competent in the marketing potential of Facebook.
A smart first step is to sign up for the Facebook Marketing Foundations training at TRUEdotAcademy.
The kind of people who are attracted to a career in PR tend to be ‘right-brained’, that is intuitive, creative and subjective. That’s why they are great at relationships, writing and coming up with inventive campaign ideas.
These are essential skills and talents, but to be a successful social media consultant you must add some ‘left-brain’ qualities. It takes being logical, objective and analytical too. This is because it’s essential to be able to take data and turn it into actionable insight.
Every time someone does something online it creates a data point. Every website visit, each like, every retweet or share, will leave a digital footprint. The job of the analyst is to gather this data and pull together a cohesive picture to identify trends and patterns.
Analyst skills and aptitudes
Effective social media analysis takes the right combination of hard skills and softer aptitudes. Click To Tweet The number one skill required is numeracy. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius but does require the ability to understand and work with numbers. Linguistics skills are important too. Understanding how people use language and the basics of syntax, phonetics and semantics all come into play.
Understanding human behavior and relationships is helpful in interpreting how and why people act, think and feel. Storytelling is important when it comes to creating reports that paint a picture of the story being told in the numbers.
And of course, software skills are paramount. A good social media consultant will be au fait with:
A social media consultant brings other aptitudes to the analysis piece too. Curiosity and creativity drive analysis in surfacing relevant trends and patterns. The ability to focus is important when it comes to pouring over thousands of posts and interactions. So is adaptability. Social media trends, platforms and technology are all always changing.
Analysis plays an important role every day in the life of a social media consultant. Daily monitoring is a foundational activity. Real-time social media intelligence supports service and sales along with innovation and development. It helps build advocate and brand relationships. It provides a competitive advantage and the agility to adjust campaigns and activities on the fly.
Social media audits
In regular audits, a social media consultant will examine key performance indicators (costs, sales, customer satisfaction) alongside social media metrics (reach, engagement, conversions). An audit will include audience analysis. It will check channel performance and return on investment.
A well-rounded social media consultant will have a bachelor’s degree and/or a relevant college diploma. Skilled analysts will also have industry certifications, for example Google Analytics, Facebook Blueprint, Twitter Flight School, Hootsuite Academy, and others.
The best social media consultants or teams are a perfect blend of left- and right-brained. Click To Tweet This balance provides both the creativity and smart insights to plan and put in place effective programs and campaigns. Find out more by filling in this form.
Great social media consultants don’t have to be RGD-certified, but they do need to have considerable design know-how. They should also have some basic design skills to bring to marketing and communications projects.
It takes a lot of design knowledge to develop a social media strategy and plan a program. For example, there are dozens (probably 100s) of format requirements for the various social networks and platforms. Getting such basics wrong could impair the impact of an image and could reflect poorly on a brand.
Photo and image selection are key design skills for social media consultants too. There are a lot of free stock photo libraries available online, but what makes an image effective? Considerations include:
Part of this is understanding how people use and view digital content, often referred to as the user experience (UX). A great social media consultant needs to be able to guide the development of content that is useful, findable and accessible. Click To Tweet
Social media consultants need to have branding competencies to be able to devise naming conventions and establish tones of voice, social lexicons and content reflecting the right look and feel.
Social media consultants often work closely with graphic designers on more complex campaigns and programs. Being able to speak their language means understanding basic design concepts. The role of the golden ratio in guiding shape and the rule of thirds in composition are just two examples. Knowing typography basics is a good idea too. This includes an awareness of text hierarchies, how kerning, leading and tracking work and how to deal with orphans & widows.
Then there is the complex subject of colour. A social media consultant should understand palettes, know about the Pantone system and have the basics of colour theory. Click To Tweet This will enhance collaboration with graphic designers and lead to better, more effective content.
No one expects a social media consultant to be a graphic designer or web developer, but having experience in using website content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress or Drupal is important. Two essential activities include publishing content online and setting up effective landing pages. Knowledge of the following software will allow a social media consultant to create shareable images, videos, gifs and more:
There’s a whole range of additional online tools that a good social media consultant can use to develop visual content. Stencil, Snappa, Canva, Visme and PromoRepublic are used to create memes, infographics, social and display ads, etc. Over and PicMonkey allow a social media consultant to edit photos easily.
Those are a few examples, but there are hundreds of design tools that support smart social media consultants. Post your favourites in the comments below!
*This story contains endorsements for products and services, which means when you click on a link that I recommend, I may receive a commission. Not every link is an affiliate link, but some are.
