Should I Hire a Social Media Manager? What to Look out for

Should I Hire a Social Media Manager? You run a business and Social Media is not your Forte, yet you believe you can scale with it.  Here is What to Look out for.

 

I am a social media manager and I have hired social media assistants and managers. And I highly suggest that if you aren’t sure what to look for when hiring one then don’t do so until you have gone over this episode.  So should I hire a social media manager? This is a question many business owners are asking themselves today. 

If you haven’t yet done so, you can find out what social media managers do.

 

Then we’ll dive into the qualities of a great social media manager.

The hiring process and a bonus surprise step I implement when I am looking to grow the K-Web Social Designs team. 

When I started my business back in 2013. I was doing my social media myself, 2016 I hired my first social media assistant/Virtual Assitant (by the way read about all that here) and my business took on a whole new shape. So much so, I wished I had hired someone sooner. 

Today I run a social media and digital marketing agency where I’ve hired social media managers and   I’ve also had a ton of experience as one. So I know exactly what I’m looking for that I think might be really helpful to you in hiring a social media manager.

For me, when I’m hiring a social media manager;

• I want someone that Walks the Talk. In short, they are doing it for themselves on the social platforms I want them to do for me too.

• They also must be a good copywriter. They’re going to be creating content for my brand on all these social media platforms including all the technical stuff, so I also look out for punctuation and good grammar.

• They must capture the essence of my brand messaging and I know this takes time, not 2-4 weeks, it can be up to 2 months even. They must be able to write in my voice and this can be a really challenging thing to do. I’ve had some social media managers that just nailed it so well. Others needed more time and nurturing. And others, unfortunately, missed the mark. 

Let’s talk about characteristics

 

 

The cost of hiring a Social Media Manager – Characteristics

1. Knowing what you need for your business is key, then you need to find someone to perfectly align with your goals and messaging. That’s one of the most important things that I look for and would recommend that you look for. You should also include in your assessments which we’ll get into soonest.

A good social media manager may go niche, yet they must be well versed in multiple channels and have their finger on the evolving algorithms,  and thus they must also be adaptable.

Adaptability speaks to the new platforms popping up on the digital space so often like Telegram, clubhouse, TikTok, etc. A good social media manager must be in a position to recommend changes in our strategy to meet the new emerging markets. I really appreciate such adaptability with platform changes and new platforms.

Some older platforms like Facebook and Instagram keep updating and adding new functionalities like searching by keywords instead of hashtags, and the person managing your social media needs to be on top of such things.

 

RECOMMENDED: HOW TO BECOME A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER WITH NO EXPERIENCE.

 

2.  Creativity is essential – imagine looking at drab, grey visuals that don’t inspire you, how do you expect them to inspire your audience? After all, we attract who and what we are, right? 

So, when I hire a social media manager or assistant, I want them to come to the table with creative ideas on how they’ll adapt content and visuals.  I want them to make suggestions for what we can change or highlight in our content, for different campaigns. new or fresh ideas for how we show up, for how we respond and engage with our audience. You should do the same. 

You too want to see that they take initiative in creating and look for opportunities to explore and test different types of content.

 

3. They must be data-driven and understand the metrics/analytics/insights. They know the goals we’re trying to reach. I don’t go for just pretty likes and meaningless comments. It’s not about creating content for the sake of content, impactful content delivers desired goals. 

You too should want content that drives engagement, creating an ROI, knowing the metrics that are leading towards lead generation, they must be able to nurture the leads to conversion.

If they don’t deliver that, they’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hope it sticks.

 

Of course, you need to understand that there is a testing period, usually in the first month and as we go along. That said, you also want to make decisions based on data. And this comes with being great copywriters and content developers. It comes with experience. That’s why it’s super important for aligning with the brand messaging and the voice.

Then they’ll create or outsource graphic designs that attract your desired audience, they will know exactly how to engage – respond to comments in a language that aligns with your messaging.

 

Your Social media manager can uplift or damage your brand reputation. So ensure that they’re putting their best foot forward and holding your brand to high standards.

 

4. Would you hire a dentist with dirty, broken teeth? 😱

In the same way, when hiring a social media manager, I also want to see that they too have a strong social media and digital presence. It’s called social proof.

Whether it’s from their current social media for their own personal accounts or if they can show me other companies/brands that they’ve managed before. Because I want to get a feel of their creativity and personality or for that brand and see do they do a good job of representing themselves or the companies that they do for. I want to see proof, examples of their work.

 

With everything we have shared above, what do you think is the most important characteristic or quality? Let us know in the comments below. If there’s something we missed that’s a really important quality to you, we’d also love for you to share that below. And now…

 

 

Why Hire a Social Media Manager – The Process

Our hiring process used to be a bit intense, now we have simplified it for ease of finding the right talent…and Yes for ease of firing the wrong talent for our brand. 

I don’t know about you, but we’d rather hire slow and firing fast. If it doesn’t work out, we don’t want to waste time trying to make things work. Our client’s cash is at risk too. 

This is my business, and I want to get the best, put our best foot forward and create the best company culture.

As a leader, I want to bring the best people to the K-Web Social team. So the hiring process is probably the most important in this case.

Allow me to share with you part of our hiring process. You can choose to take all of this or pieces of it.

 

#1. We of course put out the job description. We share it to our socials, relevant Facebook groups, and on indeed.com. Sometimes we also post it to Upwork or on digital platforms where we believe that the best candidates for the work we need will be looking for a job and we make that job description really clear. We did that recently for WODIN. 

Inside your clear role description should be the requirements aka expected results. So that they know what we expect. We include a questionnaire form inside of which we invite them to upload their resume and a short 2-min max video of them sharing why they believe they are the best fit.

We go over that during the onboarding process too.

We make it clear, what tools we will be giving them, plus the skills, and the nurturing that they need to be really successful in their role. That way, by the end of the 60-day probation period, they are either truly on board and doing it, or we look elsewhere… A pain sometimes I know, but it works for us. 

 

#2. As you can see, the resume isn’t the most important aspect, although, it is important.

Of course, we want to see the brands they’ve worked with, the experience they have, how long they’ve been in the trade. WHY…

If a resume shows that someone — not a freelancer, has been jumping around and never sticks at a job for more than a couple of months that might raise some red flags. So we certainly want to see their resume but we also on that questionnaire we ask some typical first interview-type questions.

So we can get them right then and there. We asked them about their previous experience. We asked them why they’re interested in this job. Why they might be leaving a previous job.   We asked them what they know about K-Web Social Designs. This shows us that they have done their research and if they’d be a great fit for our company culture.

 

#3. We look at their information to make sure there are no red flags and if impressed with some of their previous experience, we’ll invite them to a quick zoom call so we can put a face to info. We can prove that they did the video they sent. 

We can see how their communication is, make sure that we align in our communication.

We’ve had some people that get on those calls and although they did really well in answering the questionnaire. The communication was a little off we don’t connect at the energy level. What we were looking for in communication styles.

So in that case, we would thank them and move on to the next candidates. If in this interview it goes really well. We’ll ask them to do a test assignment and usually, we want this test assignment to be something that would take maybe 10 minutes.

Something that gives us a sample of the work that they can do, on the spot.  This gives us a really good idea if they were to be executing this role regularly.

Would we like this quality of work? Now, this also tests if they can follow instructions and if they can follow deadlines. This has been a place where people fall off too because sometimes people just won’t respond with their tester assignment and they miss the deadline completely. Some just don’t follow instructions and all, and it shows us if they were to become part of our team then it wouldn’t be a good fit.

One time, we actually had someone who got very angry saying,

“You’re trying to exploit me for free work. This would take me a day to complete”, and we said, “You know what, that’s totally fine.

Now, if they respond with that test assignment and the quality of work is great, they’ve stuck to the deadline, they’ve followed instructions. Then we’ll bring them on for the second interview where they’ll meet with the first person they met with and someone else that might be directly overseeing them to ask them more questions, just get to know them better.

Maybe talk to them about the test assignment see what they loved, what they thought they would like to do differently next time. We talk about the rates/finances.

We want to give them an assignment that is a direct reflection of their role and see how well they do with that and we’ve also had some people that unfortunately drop off at that point.

That weren’t a good fit and some that showed us that we had multiple great candidates at this place and it’s the best position you can be in if you have a hard time choosing between your final candidates.

 

Hiring a social media manager – Final word

For us sometimes we only need people for a project or part-time. Other times there’s enough work for a full-time hire. Typically, I make those decisions. 

We actually use The Winning Planner and time block. Where we write down everything we do every 30 minutes. By the end of a week, we look back and assess. 

We see where we spent our time. which activities were most time hungry and how much time did we spend on other activities?

Where should I be spending my time?  And if all of the time that you’ve spent in those other activities are enough to outsource. That gives you your answer as to whether you need to hire a social media manager or an assistant. Because you know it could be part of my role and maybe my assistant who’s also doing some of these roles or maybe I have another employee that’s also taking on some of these.

You know we know what it was like at the beginning. When we needed to outsource. We knew when we needed to bring on some talent. But I can tell you, the risk of hiring someone full-time, was a little scary.

Instead, we hired freelancers or part-time employees based on the project. So, we know exactly what we are paying them, knowing exactly the revenue that we bring in. That felt safer until we get to a place where we know it would definitely be beneficial to bring them on full time.

Regardless, try out our screening process, if you want to learn more about creating content that turns into cash flow. Whether you’re a social media manager or hiring one. These will be valuable skills for you to know how to create content that’s going to give you an ROI.

Or you could outsource the whole process to us at K-Web Social Designs to do the heavy lifting for you, create content that hits the numbers, get you found, seen, and heard by your target audience and an ROI, let us do the heavy lifting for you. 

We’ll see you in the next episode.

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