If you operate a small business, you are bombarded with dozens of responsibilities every day. From soliciting new offers, onboarding clients to delivering your services, finding time to engage on social media and grow your presence seems almost impossible. If you are reading this, then your social media presence is probably the item that often gets pushed to the bottom of your TO DO list. The result is social media profiles that haven’t been updated in months. If this sounds like you, it may be time to consider outsourcing. Outsourcing your social media will help alleviate stress and give you more time to focus on the aspects of your business you love doing most.
What does a social media manager do? A social media manager will help you define your social media goals, come up with a game plan on how to reach them, create a marketing calendar, schedule and design your posts, grow your brand recognition, increase reach and engagement, monitor your social channels and track and measure your results.
Now you may wonder what you should look for when searching for the right person to take care of your online brand. Don’t worry because we got you covered… Here are 9 Tips for Hiring the Perfect Social Media Manager.
TIP #1: ESTABLISH YOUR OUTCOME – An experienced social media manager will work with you to develop a clear vision of what they are going to create for you and clearly define the outcome that will be achieved through your hiring them for their services.
“If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there?”
Steve Maraboli
TIP #2: DEVELOP YOUR GAME PLAN – Once your outcome has been established, your social media manager will come up with a game plan to get you from where you are to where you want to be. This will begin with the creation of a monthly social media calendar that will clearly show all the holidays, promotions, special offers, and the proposed post schedule for the upcoming month. You will of course get the opportunity to review it and change or add anything you would like. Will things come up that may cause this calendar to change or shift? You bet they will! So, it is important to hire a social media manager that can adapt and shift gears easily as needed. Having this monthly calendar is beneficial to keep you both on the same page and allows you to have peace of mind that you are planning ahead and being proactive instead of reactive.
When it comes to social media success consistency is the name of the game. Your contract with your social media manager should clearly state how many times a week they will be posting to your social media site.
Based on statistical data from multiple studies the optimal posting formula is 1 post per day (MAX 2 posts) for 3+ days per week minus three exceptions.
3 Exceptions:
- Milestones and special events are HUGE, and you should share them with your audience. Do not worry about the post limit for these. Your audience will be happy for you, want to sing, dance and celebrate with you and your engagement will increase because of it.
- Instagram Stories can be posted to more often. In fact, the optimal number of posts per day for Instagram stories is 10.
- Twitter – The number of tweets per day doesn’t really have a limit since a tweet only has a lifespan of 10-15 seconds.
So, if you want to post more per day for any of these exceptions go for it!
Also, social pages with under 10,000 fans experienced a 50% drop in engagement per post if they posted more than once per day. (Hubspot)
Having a game plan on how to achieve your desired outcome and an experienced social media manager who knows how often to post, what to post and what times to post is crucial to hiring the right person for the job.
TIP #3: PROTECT YOUR BRAND – Social media is one of the best ways to build your brand recognition. Your fans on social media come for your products and services; they remain because they enjoy your style. Consider your social media channels to be an extension of your brand’s voice, tone, and personality.
Presenting a consistent brand identity across all platforms can increase revenue by up to 23% (Forbes)
An experienced social media manager already knows all these aspects and puts branding at the top of their priorities. Your brand guidelines should be followed to a tee both online and offline. Make sure when you hire a social media manager that they understand the importance of this and have the graphic ability to accurately represent your brand. Ask for samples of their work so you can see their skill level. Let’s face it, not all graphic designers are created equally… some have it and some don’t.
TIP #4: REQUEST MONTHLY TRACKING & REPORTING – Your social media manager should regularly track the metrics and then alter your social media strategy as needed to enhance certain KPIs. This is an important stage since it guarantees that your company is not spending time and money on unsuccessful methods. Be sure to include tracking and reporting in your contract. Keep an eye on your investment by requesting a monthly report from your social media manager.
TIP #5: INQUIRE ABOUT MONITORING TECHNIQUES – Social media enables real-time contact and input from customers and they expect a timely reply. With almost half of all consumers in the United States utilizing social media to ask inquiries about products or services, having a social media customer care plan is critical.
As a brand, you must constantly make certain that your consumers or potential clients do not feel overlooked. They must believe that they are cherished. A good social media manager will have alerts set up to notify them when someone has liked or commented on a post and be able to reply accordingly. You must keep in mind, they will not be on your social media 24/7, so you should also be keeping an eye out for this when you have time. The more people monitoring and being able to respond in a timely manner the better.
Also, an experienced manager will monitor what your competitors are doing and keep up to date with the latest hashtags relevant to your niche. When finding the perfect social media manager make sure you inquire on their strategies for monitoring and make sure your expectations are clearly outlined in the contract.
TIP #6: CREATE AN APPROVAL PROCESS – I have heard horror stories from clients when they hired a social media manager and didn’t have a proper approval process in place. They hired someone with little experience that talked a good game. They gave them full access to their social media and said have at it. Well, since there was no marketing calendar and no approval process put in place it created some less than desirable outcomes. Here are some of the horror stories they experienced, which ultimately did more to damage their brand than to help it.
Horror Story #1 – One client had someone who was posting 20+ hashtags on their Facebook posts. This is borderline acceptable on Instagram but is not acceptable on Facebook and can cost you followers. Each post must be written to accommodate the needs of each social site. Here is a chart of the optimal number of hashtags to use per site.
Horror Story #2 – One client hired a virtual assistant to save some money. One of the many, many mistakes the VA made was posting a post to join their event at 4 pm when the event had started at 3 pm. This happened quite a few times and since there weren’t any checks and balances in place, they went undetected. VA’s experience is usually in data entry and not social media, so you must be incredibly careful that you hire someone experienced to represent your brand. If social media is not managed properly, it could cause severe damage to your online reputation.
Horror Story #3 – One client had hired a social media manager that was typing the same prewritten auto-message to everyone over and over, and not even properly responding to the customers’ inquiry. They were also not speaking in the brand voice and using terms in their posts that they would never use in conversation such as Ye’ All. I don’t need to explain to you how many customers they lost in this fiasco.
I really could go on and on with the horror stories I have heard from clients who have hired the wrong social media marketing manager. But do not fear, this won’t be you. If you follow these top 9 tips for hiring your perfect social media manager, you will be set up for success.
I suggest establishing an approval process for you to review the posts before they go out. I know your probably thinking isn’t the whole point of hiring a social media manager so I don’t have to do this, and I can free up more of my time? Yes, however, it will take some time for your social media manager to learn your tone, voice, and preferences. Therefore, I suggest that you monitor the posts at least for the first month or so until you feel comfortable with giving them full reigns. This is vital when it comes to creating rapport and building trust with your new social media manager.
TIP #7: DEFINE YOUR ADVERTISING BUDGET – If your goal is to grow your social media reach, engagement, and brand awareness, then it is crucial to set an advertising budget. I have seen a bunch of different percentages out there on how much of your audience actually sees your posts. The average seems to hover around 10%. This means that if you have 500 followers only 50 people on average are seeing your posts. If you have 200 followers, then only 20 people are seeing your posts. Yes, this can increase if you increase your engagement and number of posts, but it still will not rise tremendously unless you start boosting posts and running ads to increase your number of followers. The best way to do this is to have a set advertising budget for your social media manager to work with each month. This is completely defined by you and is necessary if you are looking for some substantial growth. You should also make sure that the social media manager you are about to hire has experience placing ads and knows how to track, measure, and tweak them to get maximum results.
TIP #8: ENSURE COPYRIGHT PROTECTION – Let’s talk about Copyright Infringement for a second. You cannot just pick any picture you find through a google search. You have to make sure you have the right to use that photo. I know several companies that have been sued over this. Their fees were anywhere from $10,000+ because they hired a marketing person who did not know what they were doing. Cheaper is not always better. To protect you and your brand, your contract with your social media manager should include a copyright disclaimer. You should establish in writing that your social media manager is utilizing photos that are “Free to use for commercial purposes”, and “No Attribution is Required”. There are plenty of free photo websites out there, but it is also good to allot a budget to them in case they need to purchase photos. In addition, make sure you have in writing that your organization retains the copyright to any items created or written by the social media manager and at any time you can request the original artwork files from the social media manager.
TIP #9: HIRE A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER WITH EXPERIENCE – To avoid some of the horror stories mentioned above I will say this… experience matters. You want someone who is experienced at managing social media sites and actively is following emerging trends. Ask them to send in samples of their work and statistics from their clients. Keep in mind, most people do not want to admit they are not managing their own social media so most clients will have a confidentiality agreement in place with their social media manager, but they should be able to share the stats while keeping the identity of the client confidential. A good social media manager is hard to find, but when you do it, it is like a God send.
Be sure to work with people with plenty of experience in the field, even if their prices are on the steeper side. Cheaper is not better. The cost of damage control can sometimes be more costly than hiring the perfect person from the get-go.
I hope you have a good idea of what to look for and ask for when you are interviewing with your next social media manager. If you have any questions regarding the topic, feel free to reach out. I will be happy to answer them for you.
If you would like to set up a call to talk to me about being your social manager, here is a link to my calendar. I would LOVE 💗 to speak with you!
Warmest Wishes,
Holly Reville
Marketing | Branding | Social Media Management | Graphic Design
👉 Book an appointment: https://calendly.com/hollyreville/lets-talk-marketing