How to Hire Your First Social Media Manager
The power of the internet can not be underestimated. The first recognizable social media site, Six degrees, was created in 1997. Today, there is a tremendous variety of social networking sites. For a long period, social media users only saw it as a means to interact with each other on a social sphere. This misconception made a lot of businesses lose out on the benefits that social media had to offer in the business realm. It took business owners a long time to realize the power of social media.
Social media is a great tool to grow a company’s relationship ship with its target audience. Even though the knowledge of social media is now open to various business owners, some still find it difficult to learn the craft. Research shows that out of the 7.2 billion people on earth, 2.1 are active on social media. Social media advert is one of the cheapest and fastest ways to get to a huge amount of people. A lot of people hardly watch the television or have time to look at billboards. But with just ac click on social media, the information you want to share spreads like the flu. But social media has its pros and cons and if not managed appropriately can land your business into a great mess. To get the result needed to fast-track your company’s social media presence online, you need to get a social media manager.
A social media manager is the person that monitors, filters, contributes to, and guides the social media presence of a business product or brand. A social media manager can be a copywriter, marketer, strategist, designer, analyst, and customer representative. As a social media manager, you will manage a company’s online presence by creating a strategy, producing good content, analyzing usage data, facilitating customer service, and managing campaigns and projects.
Some of their major duties include
Content creation
One of the primary duties of a social media manager is to create regular content to share on your social media accounts. This is done to keep your client’s mind on you. As it is popularly said “out of sight is out of mind’. This content can be in form of articles, podcasts, videos, or infographics. Whichever one it is, it should be original and add value.
Manage your content calendar
A good social media manager will have a schedule of what to do and when to do it. The first step is to create the content as stated above, another is to determine when to post them. A manager should have a record of all contents drafted, both old and new. This record will help you keep track of what has been done and what needs to be done. Again it will give you an idea of which content led to an increase in sales, when, and how to utilize it for better yield.
Engage with followers
It is one thing to get followers, another to keep them. A social media manager should be very interactive with brand followers, customers or not. Any comment or question regarding your brand should not be left unanswered. Contributions or criticism from customers should be accepted with no follow-up shade.
Monitor social media trends
Social media is not a place to be stale. One news might be trending now and in a matter of minutes another had taken over. To stay abreast of current news, you need to be constantly monitoring trending hashtags, viral news, and practices in the industry. A business owner with so much to do might not be available to do all this. This is where a social media manager comes in. Social media managers are internet gurus, they are always online looking out for even the tiniest change in trends. With a social media handler on your side, you will not be the last to hear of a current trend.
Review performance indicators
It is the work of a social media manager to monitor the performance indicators of any content uploaded. He checks the level of engagement on your account, how many people go through the blog post, and how long the reader stays on the page. Then he collates this information and uses it to analyze the performance of particular content and identify the strengths and flaws. He will also use this information to strategize on means of improving the flaws.
Hiring a social media manager is quite expensive. This is why you need to think carefully before deciding whether to hire a social media manager.
When Do You Need A Social Media Manager
Your current social media presence is low
A social media business account is not created for fancy. It is created to increase customer engagement and revenue. So if your social media account is not doing this, then there is a problem. If your business account is not getting many followers or customers are not patronizing you through it, then you need to contact a handler immediately. A good social media handler will flip your situation in a matter of months or even weeks. He will raise brand awareness and increase sales and customers.
Focus on your business
Trying to run a social media account with your day-to-day business operation can be very daunting. Running a successful social media account is time-consuming. Hiring a social media manager will give you the time to focus on the physical operations of your business.
Your current social media account is overwhelming
The need for a social media manager is not limited to businesses that do not an active online presence. When your business has an overwhelming online presence that you can no longer handle the inflow, it is time to hand over the reins to someone experienced to take over.
If your business falls into one of the categories above and you have decided to move forward and get a social media handler, below is a guide to hiring the best of the bests.
What are the channels the social media manager will oversee?
While many social media managers know about any given social network, some specialize in one. Knowledge of your business will give you an outright idea of which social media platform will be necessary to capture your ideal clients. Social media handlers can also help you build a presence on new platforms. Several hidden platforms do not operate like the usual social media platforms that can be used to drive sales and promote businesses. This includes Tik Tok, Pinterest, and even clubhouse. Understanding the channels you need to grow your business will help you to decide whether to hire a specialist in that area or a general handler.
Outline the necessary skills your social media manager must have
Before putting up an online advert for a social media handler, you must consider the skills for assessing the potential candidate. Some of these skills include communication skills, writing skills, creativity, organizational skills, strategy planning, tactics and execution, community management, understanding of the social web, editing, and design.
Determine if you need a full time or freelance social media manager
Depending on the needs and scale of your business, you can decide to hire a full-time or freelance social media handler. An in-house hire works full time in your company and is usually more productive, cause he is focused solely on your business. But a freelancer might have several other business accounts to handle.
Determine if you have the finances
This is the most important factor to consider before hiring. Hiring a social media manager can be quite expensive. You need to check if you have the right fund to hire such a person. This will also help you determine the kind of handler you need. Whether the handler will be full-time or freelance as said above. It will even help you streamline the channels you need handlers for. If you don’t have enough funds, you can choose fewer channels and get a specialist in that area.
Where to find social media handlers
Now that you have a clear idea of what to look out for and the finance has been allocated. The next step is to start looking for the right candidate. You can achieve this by placing a job listing on all the usual job sites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and other job sites. You can even post on social media pages or ask friends to refer someone to you.
How to screen applicants
Once you have posted your advert online, so many applications will start coming in. The question is how do you tell who is who? The simplest way to screen out applicants is by checking their social media accounts. Check the follower counts. If they can not get people to follow them, how can they influence people to follow you? Check what they have been sharing and liking. Do they have an interactive audience with followers? Look out for references of other businesses they have handled in the past.
During the interview make sure you identify these parameters
Request details on the results of past campaigns or accounts they have handled
Get details on how they measure performance
Provide a difficult scenario and ask them how they intend to handle it
Ask them to describe how they understand your brand’s voice
Is the person capable of handling multiple channels?
Does your candidate have a good online presence?
How to use scoring sites to assess a candidate
After you have checked the candidate’s social media accounts and seen their activity for at least the past one month, you can further confirm the authenticity of followers and likes. It is no longer news that people buy followers and likes on social media accounts. To determine if a candidate is what he claims he is, uses social scoring sites like Klout, kred, and Peerindex. Klout is one of the best tools social scoring tools. It scores from 0 to 100. A Klout score of 40 is about average. When assessing a candidate, aim for a Klout score of 60 and above.