How to Become a Social Media Strategist

This article provides information about what a Social Media Strategist is and does, what tools they need to use in their profession, and the steps necessary to take to get started in this career. Learning what this exciting career path is and what it entails will help you determine whether social media strategy is the right career pathway for you to go down. 

What is a Social Media Strategist?

A Social Media Strategist is someone in charge of the social media accounts and online presence of a brand or company. This includes managing a brand’s posts to various online platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter/X, developing or implementing social media marketing campaigns, tracking and increasing audience engagement, and working to raise awareness of a brand and its products. Social Media Strategists need to have a firm grasp on what content is appealing on different platforms, how users meaningfully engage with content and brands on these platforms, and what the important trends brands can tap into across platforms are. Not only do Social Media Strategists post and manage content on social media, but they also work with audience analytics, paying attention to how users react to and engage with a brand’s content to determine the success of specific campaigns and future strategies for further engagement.

What Tools Do I Need To Get Started?

As a Social Media Strategist, there are many free and paid tools that you will need to acquire or become familiar with. Here are some of the most popular tools and services that successful Social Media Strategists use. 

One of the most important tools you will need to become familiar with is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free service that will help you better understand your target audience and how they engage with a brand’s content on a website or application. A paid product from Google that you will likely need to learn how to wield is Google Ads, a pay-per-click service to help market products and services to specific audiences. Both Google Analytics and Google Ads can be tricky to master and there are seminars and tutorials, both free and paid, that one can take to improve performance when using these services. 

Whether you’re a novice or a more advanced Social Media Strategist, another important tool that many Social Media Strategists use is Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a useful social media management tool that allows you to curate, schedule, and post content across popular social media platforms. Hootsuite is a paid subscription service and costs $99 a month after a free trial period. 

If you’re working for a business that is seeking to develop its social media presence, Buffer offers a toolkit of services to publish and manage content and analyze one’s growing audience. Getting started with this service is free for up to three linked social media accounts, but to access their engagement tools and analytics reports it will cost $5 a month per social media channel.

Social Media Strategists are often tasked with creating content for a brand’s social media presence, and there are applications and programs to help with this part of the job, as well. Canva is one of the most popular and easy-to-use digital graphic design tools. Canva has both a limited free option and a more feature-heavy $120-a-year plan geared toward professionals. If you’re already using Buffer as a service, it comes with Pablo, an image editing application for social media content creation that functions as an alternative to Canva. 

Steps to Become a Social Media Strategist

There are a variety of free and paid resources you can explore to become a Social Media Strategist. To start, you can research more about this career online to learn if it is right for you and to clarify what steps one needs to take to become a Social Media Strategist. One such resource you can explore is Noble Desktop’s free Intro to Social Media Marketing seminar. This free video seminar will provide an introduction to this career and its benefits, the basics about relevant social media platforms, and teach the pillars of success for a Social Media Strategist. 

Once you are clear on the basics of being a Social Media Strategist, you can start by building your own online presence or volunteering your services for a local business or non-profit. As long as you have basic familiarity with how to use, post content to, and engage with audiences across different social media platforms, you can get started building up your portfolio initially even without further education or advanced knowledge of analytics, marketing, and advertising. At this point, you can use graphic design tools like Canva, Adobe Express, or many other free alternatives to create and curate social media posts and consider using subscription services like Buffer or Hootsuite to help manage the scheduling and posting of content across multiple social media platforms. These are paid services, however, you can find cheaper alternatives by searching online. Once you are ready to move into the professional sphere of social media strategy, then you will want to think about using services like Google Analytics to aid your implementation of social media campaigns and make sure you not only engage with but also grow your audience.

Additionally, it is important to note that many employers look for a Social Media Strategist who has a bachelor’s degree in marketing, communication, or public relations and has experience successfully using social media to promote, market, or build awareness of something, like a brand, a product, or a cause. Even without a bachelor’s degree, you can gain some of the foundational skills by pursuing a boot camp or certification program, which should also push you to start developing a portfolio of your work that you can show to future employers to prove your capabilities.

Social Media Strategist Career Path

As a Social Media Strategist, you will need to excel at communication, analysis, and planning, as all three skills are key to the tasks you will be performing daily. Many Social Media Strategies set the foundation for their career by earning a bachelor’s degree in marketing, public relations, or communications and gain professional experience working as a marketing intern while still in university. Internships can often turn into entry-level positions with a marketing firm or agency upon graduation and an internship allows you to build a portfolio of work to showcase skills to future employers. 

If you don’t follow the university education pathway, you can still get started down this career path through self-education, taking a certificate program, or attending a short boot camp to learn the fundamentals of social media marketing and strategy. Instead of pursuing internships, you might gain experience through volunteering to run social media campaigns for a local small business, or a non-profit, or by building up your online presence, all of which should allow you to develop a portfolio of work to show potential employers that you can successfully run their social media marketing campaigns.

Social Media Strategists can work as freelancers, for marketing agencies or firms, or as part of one company’s in-house marketing team. As a freelancer, you have the power to determine which clients you take on and you can set your own hours. Working for agencies or as part of an in-house marketing team can involve working as a singular Social Media Strategist but often involves more teamwork and team decision-making as well as the need to communicate not only with your clients but across different company departments to promote the vision of the brand. 

Pursuing Social Media Strategy as a career can also set you on the pathway for other jobs in online marketing, analysis, or strategy, including Digital Marketer, Digital Analyst, or Digital Strategist. These careers will require more extensive knowledge of digital marketing and business practices beyond those used on social media platforms. With the right skills, a Social Media Strategist can also pivot into a career as a Web Optimization Specialist or Paid Search Manager. 

Why Become A Social Media Strategist?

Social Media Strategy is a good career path for someone interested in marketing, communications, public relations, and social media. It can be very rewarding to help a brand or business grow its audience base and achieve wider success. Almost everyone and everything has an online presence, so, Social Media Strategists are necessary to help individuals and companies achieve success and sell their products. This also means that if there is a specific type of client you want to work for, whether that is in the retail sector, healthcare, education, or for a non-profit, you can gear your career as a Social Media Strategist to your interests. Becoming a Social Media Strategist can set you up to transition into other careers in digital marketing, content creation, or data analytics. 

Learn the Skills to Become a Social Media Strategist at Noble Desktop

For those looking to become a Social Media Strategist, Noble Desktop offers a Social Media Marketing Certificate program that can be taken in person in New York City or live online from any location. This program teaches useful marketing strategies, how to tap into popular trends, and how paid advertising works across major social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and YouTube. In this program, you will learn the strategies to create compelling visual and written content that will raise a profile to the top of a platform and be seen by the right audiences. Additionally, this Noble Desktop certificate program includes one-on-one mentoring from experts in the field and allows students to create a portfolio of work they can show to potential employers. 

Students might also be interested in Noble Desktop’s Digital Marketing Certificate, which can be taken in person in New York City or live online. Not only will one learn the skills necessary to become a Social Media Strategist in this certificate program, but students will also learn a wider array of skills necessary for the digital marketplace. In addition to social media marketing, this program teaches students about search engine optimization (SEO), marketing across email and other forms of content, and how to track and analyze key performance data and analytics. This program also offers expert mentoring as you work on real projects to improve your digital marketing skills. 

Noble Desktop also offers shorter programs of study, such as a six-hour class on Digital Market Strategy & Web Fundamentals. This shorter class allows students to develop a successful digital marketing strategy to reach a desired audience as well as learn about everything that goes into what makes a great website, who makes up the target audience, and how to reach that audience. In addition, Noble Desktop has targeted boot camps for individual social media platforms (TikTok Marketing, Instagram Marketing, Facebook Marketing, LinkedIn Marketing, and Social Media Marketing: Blogs and Twitter) and skills such as Content Marketing, Email Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization that may interest those looking to upskill or quickly learn the basics of a specific form of digital marketing.