Social Media Marketing Consultants & Experts for Hire

An introductory guide to hiring the perfect social media expert for your company.

Introduction
A Social Media Manager Needs More

The industry of social media is still relatively new, making it difficult to find and hire the right person. There is more than skill and talent to consider.

You also want to think about creativity, consistency, experience, past results, strategy, planning, delivery, constant training and the passion to learn more.

There is a lot to consider when choosing the right person to represent your company so publicly.

You probably already know how much social media can affect your business, so let’s jump right into this finding and hiring a social media manager or expert that will deliver results you’ll appreciate.

1. Defining Your Goals

How Do You Want To Benefit From Social Media?

How do you see social media being beneficial for your business? Based on what you already know about social media, what benefit do you think it will bring your business?

Here are some of the potential reasons companies get from using social media:
• Sales
• Traffic
• Leads
• Public Relations
• Customer Service
• Reputation Management
• Sentiment
• Business Relationships
• Market Research

For many, traffic, leads and sales will top the list of priorities.

For social media to work though, it’s important to consider the social/public aspect, and how important it is to have a draw to get people to follow/like your profiles.

It’s important for you to have a clear idea of what you expect from social media before you start looking for someone to work with.

Only with clear expectations will they be able to come
up with a strategic plan that will benefit you.

2. Salaries for A Social Media Expert

How Much Should You Pay?

What you can offer a social media person is going to directly affect what experience you can draw to your company.

The more successful results and knowledge they have, the more you can expect to pay. But before you post an ad you need a realistic idea of what to offer.

Social Media Responsibilities & Pay

Daily management & updates – little to no strategy or end game- all issues handled by superior $10 per hour

w/Strategy where content is carefully constructed and delivered, but there is a lack of experience $15 per hour

Experienced with 3-5 clients- understand of analytics, engagement, curation & making changes as needed to entire strategy- constant finger on industry pulse $20 per hour

Handling multiple accounts across several platforms, constant management of all accounts, analytics, content, sharing, and results, planning contests, setting up new accounts $25 per hour Managing other employees to handle some of the social media work, plus above listed responsibilities $30 per hour

Reputation management, enterprise tools, handling employees, several clients or accounts, social media marketing department head, building business relationships, social media advertising, etc $35+ per hour

• These are suggested numbers we would use when hiring for the same help.

Please consider the cost of living in your area, whether or not you are offering remote work, how experienced a candidate is, how successful they have been in the past, the size of your company, and their support for social media within the company.

3. Writing the Ad

How to Get Hundreds of Applications

This part can be done fairly easily now that you’ve already decided what results you’d like to see from social media activity in your company, and you’ve considered the budget you have for the position.

Here is a list of things you should include:
• Your company name, and industry you serve
• The area where the person will have to live to work this job, or mention that it is remote if you are open to that
• Some of the goals you’ve already considered
• Your own social media profile links
• Candidate requirements for school, experience, etc
• How to apply information, mildly detailed to weed out people who are not serious
• The salary you are proposing
• Where questions can be sent
• Where applications should be sent
• Dates for when you’ll stop accepting applications, when interviews begin
• That you won’t to reply to everyone individually

*Based on the age of the internet marketing industry we do ask that applicants have a degree or a specific amount of schooling.

Requiring a degree can be beneficial for some industries, but with social media, personality, skill, and creativity play a much more important role.

Additionally, social media is often about transparency, and unless your company has a good reason to hide their identity, we ask that you include information about your company.

This helps weed out people who would be less than interested in working in your industry, with your company, or in certain geographical areas.

Sample Wanted Ad

We at (Company name) are looking for a social media professional in the Los Angeles area that can help us achieve our goals of:
• Updating our social media profiles more consistently
• Connecting with our followers and building a community in our industry
• Using social media advertising to get more leads and immediate sales of our products
• Bringing more traffic to our website and blog posts, after strategically creating relevant and entertaining/educational content for our potential visitors and industry influencers
• Turning our loyal fans into brand ambassadors who help us grow in popularity
Our company helps _____, and already has a social presence on Facebook, Twitter (any place you have a following or public profile).
By working with our company, you’ll be part of an amazing industry
that ______.
Before you respond to this ad, please read the following requirements:
• Must have 3 years of experience with social media marketing
• Must be a dedicated, hard-working and independent person that can make decisions quickly
• Must have current social media profiles of their own (and include them in their response to this ad)
• Must understand the importance of content in social media

Sample Ad Continued

If you are interested in working with us after reading this ad, please apply by doing the following:
• Visit our social media profiles and give us 3-5 insights that best showcase where we need to improve and your expertise.
• Send us your own social media profile links, and any blogs you often write to.
• Tell us how you would improve your own social media strategy.
• Tell us why you think you would be a good fit for this position.
• Tell us when you can start.
Based on experience, location, and your level of social media comprehension, the salary we are proposing will be from $20 and up.
General questions can be sent to [email protected] & Applications & Resumes can be sent to [email protected]
Applications will be accepted until December 15th, 2013 and we should begin calling for interviews on December 20th, 2013. We may not reply to everyone individually based on how many applications
we receive.

Download the word document for this ad at:
http://socialmediafuze.com/downloads/sample-wanted-ad/

4. Where To Post Your Ad

Places Social Media People Frequent

You know what you want, you know what you’re going to say, now you need to post your ad. This part is fairly simple, you want to post it where it will be found by the best candidates. Here is a list we would
use:
• Inbound.org http://www.inbound.org/jobs
• Craigslist- don’t worry with the above ad you’ll be considered a legitimate opportunity
• Monster http://monster.com
• Social Media Manager Groups on Linkedin
– http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=66325
Social Media Marketing
– http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=66275
Social Media Today
• Linkedin Jobs (this is a different section that Linkedin groups)
– http://www.linkedin.com/job/consumer/wow/index?trk=jobs_home_post_job_new

Social Media Manager Group on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sms4smm/
Your twitter account, or by notifying social media job profiles on Twitter
– https://twitter.com/socialmediajobs
– https://twitter.com/LASocialJobs
– https://twitter.com/Jobs_SM
– https://twitter.com/SocialMediaJob
Other places to post your position:
– http://www.jobsinsocialmedia.com/
– http://www.mediabistro.com/Social-Media-jobs.html

5. The Interview

What To Ask The Candidates

You should be getting several applications at this point, and when you are ready, here are some great questions to ask, along with the answers they should answer.

How do you stay on top of the changes in the industry? – social media changes daily, every social media professional needs to be in tune with the changes. No matter who they are, they must have a way to stay on top of changes.

What is your favorite social media website and why? – we all have our favorite, and for different things. For instance I like Twitter for driving traffic. Linkedin has the best B2B traffic, and Facebook is my
least favorite because it is difficult to grow without advertising.

What is your least favorite platform and why? – same as above.

What tools do you like to use?– similar to staying on top of the changes, all experts have their favorite tools. Ask what their favorite tool is.

Common answers are Fan Page Robot, Hootsuite, etc. The most important thing is to find out they are using tools and why they like them.

How do you feel about automation? – This is a tricky question as some parts of social media can be automated and others should not be.

For example- scheduling ahead is great, but having all of your
content automated is not a good idea, especially in responding to mentions, tags, etc.

Automated responses tend to cause trouble and look unprofessional, such as the Bank of America fiasco where several employees sent canned automated responses.

How do you handle negative comments on public profiles? Regardless, of how you feel about responding
to negative comments, your potential social media manager has an opinion, too.

What kind of results do you expect to see based on the suggestions you had for our profiles? Be wary of anyone proposing overnight success.

How much growth do you feel we can expect to see in 6 months time? -Again, be wary of anyone making extreme promises, or even suggesting buying likes/fans/followers.

What do you like about what we’ve already done with our social profiles? What do you dislike? -This is a question where they are able to show off their expertise and knowledge of the industry.

Choosing the Perfect Candidate

As you begin the interview process, we suggest making list of the qualities you’d like to see in your perfect candidate, as you go through more applications, add to the list what other factors you’d like them to have.

Once interviews begin, keep track of top candidates you feel would work best for your company and those that are possibilities but maybe you don’t have enough information to draw a conclusion yet.

Once you know someone would make a good fit, put them aside as a possible perfect candidate. Once you know someone is NOT a good fit, remove them from your possibilities.

In the end, choose the candidate that you are most confident in. We’ve always found our initial list to be very helpful in making this decision.