Social media has quickly and radically changed the way we do business and has become the new marketplace. This shift gives businesses massive opportunities for their brand to grow online.
However, it would be wrong to assume that social media is only a tool to go viral. Social media is about creating valuable relationships with your audience. These relationships could turn to potential leads and generate traffic towards your brand offering.
A social media manager acts as a bridge between your brand and your audience, creating high-quality content relevant to your audience and forging mutually beneficial relationships with your online communities.
Use the following six questions to assess the best candidate to be your brand's social media manager:
1. What social media platforms are best for my business and why?
The ideal candidate should have researched your brand and your customer base and should be able to describe the brand personality in a few words. This question demonstrates their brand knowledge.
The ideal answer is that the company must concentrate on the social media networks where their customers are. The more detailed the solution, the better.
2. According to you, what is the most important thing a social media manager should be doing?
The answer you should be looking for is understanding and engaging your online audience. You are not looking for someone who can only create content but can also meaningfully interact with your specific audience.
A social media manager should listen to the brand's social community and build authentic relationships with your audience. When you listen to your audience, you learn how to help them buy.
So audience management is the ideal answer to this.
3. What is your experience in building and engaging an online community?
When it comes to social media, the "social" aspect is more important than the "media" aspect. It is about connecting with people. These online relationships have the potential to impact your bottom line directly.
Experience and strategy will help you build your community. The candidate has to elaborate on the strategies they plan to use to build your online community. The more demonstrable experience they have, the better.
4. What are the relevant metrics for tracking return on investment (ROI) on social media?
You cannot improve what you cannot measure. The prospect must be able to use and understand social media analytics tools and data. The three most important metrics to look out for are:
Engagement: the rate at which viewers interact with your content and roughly shows how interested your audience is in your content.
Leads: this refers to a potential customer or a way to get in touch with a potential customer (e.g., phone number or email address).
Conversions: the rate at which visitors do something you want them to on a site, e.g., subscribing for a newsletter, downloading software, or completing a purchase.
5. How do you deal with negative comments or a brand reputation crisis?
Social media is a turbulent environment. While it is unlikely that you will experience a social media brand crisis, the amount of money, time, and stress your company will save by preparing for one is immeasurable.
The prospect must be able to recognise a brand crisis and have an idea of how to swiftly and effectively handle the situation. The first point of reference a prospective candidate must site is the company's "best practices" protocol in place.
6. Please give me an example of an imaginary news release that we can use to promote the business.
This is where you test your candidate's creativity in realtime. If they can tell a compelling story, that would significantly benefit your social media marketing efforts.
Humans relate through stories. Stories paint a picture in the customer's mind and evoke positive emotions that build trust and credibility.
The prospect must be able to illustrate through stories why a client must choose your brand over that of competitors.
Wrapping Up
Your social media manager will be the lifeblood of your brand reputation online and will be the point of contact to many new, current, and legacy clients. Be deliberate and choose someone who can embody your brand personality online.
Contact me for more specific questions about branding and social media marketing on the Contact Page of the site, and stay subscribed for more.
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