Things To Look For When Hiring a Social Media Manager

Hiring a Social Media Manager can be a tricky proposition these days.  Anyone can wake up in the morning jump out of bed and declare “I’M A SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT”!  There is no governing body, no standard for practice and no rules to monitor those who claim such titles.

How Do You Pick The Right Social Media Manager?

Is there fruit on their tree?  Do they have social accounts set up?  Do they have followers?  Do they run a business using their strategies and techniques?  Do they have success stories with real clients?  Do they have their own personal success stories?

Minimum Prerequisites For A Social Media Manager To Get An Interview With You

Twitter - Minimum followers needs to be 2000.  The reason is because Twitter has a rule that you cannot follow 2000+ until you have 2000 followers your self.  Anyone less then 2000 followers probably doesn’t know this rule and this would be considered basic knowledge when it comes to twitter.

Facebook Fan Page - I would say their business page needs to have a minimum 500 fans.  This can be tricky because it’s fairly easy to buy fans for your fan page.  As a perfect example my ByzHub Fan Page has 1,087 fans all through organic growth.  Then I have my Speed-Sew Fan Page where I experimented a little and went from 67 fans to 2,462 fans in a week.

LinkedIn - The benchmark for LinkedIn is 500+.  Once you get to 500 connections it’s kinda tricky to see how many connections someone has because by default LinkedIn shows 500+ on your profile page.

It’s hard even for a social media manager to have 10+ accounts and have them all active but they should at least have accounts created and optimized.  Other accounts to investigate are.

• Google+
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Foursquare
• A 2nd or 3rd Twitter account

Which ever social account they are most prominent on there needs to be activity.  If the last post is a week or older that is an eon in terms of social media.

At the present time anyone who is up to speed with social media should regularly be getting speaking gigs.  Social media is a hot topic today, ask your potential candidate the last time they spoke and the next time they are scheduled to speak.  I get talks weekly and they should be too.

One more thing to keep in mind is that social media is an extension of your entire Internet marketing strategy.  Are your potential new hires knowledgeable in or have a team who are knowledgeable in.

• Website design with a strong call to action
• Email Marketing
• Blogging
• Analytics
• Search Engine Optimizations
• Pay Per Click and AdWords

Make sure you do your homework before you hire.  You also want to check out agencies that do it for you.  This eliminates the risk of an employee leaving you to dry.