How to Hire Someone to Handle Your Social Media Marketing?

How to Hire Someone to Handle Your Social Media Marketing?

Virtually every online or offline business has a social profile of some sort on one of the top social media sites. And no matter your type of business, there is a place on social media that is perfect for your business. Whether you're a photographer business using Pinterest, or an Internet marketer or affiliate using Twitter. But actually doing the SMM (Social Media Marketing) on those social media sites is another story altogether. Subsequently, many social media site owners neglect this aspect of their business and loose out on business, clients and money because of it.

So this is something that many people and businesses consider; should you hire someone to do your SMM and how to know where to look to find someone that can do it for you? And when it comes to good business today, you will want to have an experience SMM handling that side of your business. The business pace changes fast in the online world, so it can be hard for your business to keep up with these changes. So to help with that, here's some reasons why and how you should hire someone to handle that side of things for you, leaving you free to handle the more important parts of business like fulfilling and completing peoples orders and banking money.

Hire Someone Dedicated to Helping Increase Your Brand Awareness

The SMM (Social Media Manager) is the person who will be able to seek out new followers or fans for your social profiles and pages and market and promote your products and services online to their network of friends. Your SMM will be the "Cheerleader" for your business! They will be able to engage with people and respond to any questions or queries that your users/fans, clients or customers have. They may have to consult you first to get the right answer, but that's part of the job. Did you know that on average, around 90% of posts on businesses pages aren't responded to by the business? Your SMM will be able to do that for you so that you don't miss anything and loose out on future and repeat business. People love to be acknowledged and responded to. After all, this is "social" media so being social is all part and parcel of good business.

Because They Can Do The Thinking For You

Having to think about things can be a time consuming process. An SMM's job is to do the thinking for you. Freeing up your time to do more important things like running your business and adding new products, services etc. They can think for you once they know what your business is about and what you're trying to do. They can create appealing posts that prompt responses from your fans. You'll have to give them some direction to work towards such as telling them the sort of things to post and how to come up with ideas, but a good SMM will have this experience under their belt and be able to do exactly that, in the exact way you want them to.

And SMM's Give You More Time to Run Your Business

As already pointed out twice, hiring an SMM will give you much more time to run your business. And who doesn't wish they had more hours in the day to get more done? It can be very time consuming just managing one social profile let alone all of them. We all know how fast the hours can fly by when you're using Pinterest looking at things people have pinned for ideas and inspiration which you could be putting into more important things like entertaining new clients or contacting previous clients to see if they need any more business with you.

Does that sound good to you? Who wouldn't want more time to do the more important things in their business or more time to come up with new services or products you can sell? Managing a business on its own (even without any social media optimization) can take up a lot of time on its own. So hiring an SMM to take over that side of things for you can increase your productivity, sales and earnings as a company.

But there are some things to consider first before hiring an SMM and here we will share what some of those considerations are so that you can make a much better decision on which SMM you should hire so you can get the best bang for your buck!

Quite simply, it really goes without saying, you will only want to hire an experienced and professional SMO. You can hire someone a little less experienced with a little less credentials for a little cheaper, but that will probably reflect on your social media pages and they wont do as good a job as a professional will which will also reflect on your social media pages. And you want the best for your business right?

How To Find a Good Social Media Manager?

Consider Hiring a Freelancer

There are quite a few very good, professional freelancers you can hire for this type of work right here on SEOClerks. Just visit the Hire a Freelancer page and you can find a very good freelancer that will liaise with you that you can hire. You can sort by positive recommendations, total orders and response time. You will ideally want to pick someone that has a lot of positive recommendations and has a fast response time. You can then click on their profile and send them a message to ask them if it's something that they can do. Chances are it will be and you will then be able to work something out with them such as how much your budget is, how much you'll pay them for it, what kind of things you're looking for etc.

Check On LinkedIn

This is what LinkedIn is all about and why it's there. So you can find someone to employ for your business and its needs. You can search on LinkedIn for things like "social media manager" or "social media consultant/strategist" etc etc. It will return lists of professionals in that area. You can even filter by your country to find only native English speaking professionals. Then you can visit their profile and see all of their credentials, skills and experience in those areas of SMO (Social Media Optimization). Their profiles will show you links to their own social media pages as well such as their personal or business Facebook page, their Twitter account or Google+ or YouTube account etc. This is very helpful because you will want to hire only someone that "practices what they teach". There are many fake people on LinkedIn that blag there way into work but don't really have the skills or experience to do it in a proper way. Using this method you can weed out the fakers from the real people that are worth hiring. That's what LinkedIn is for!

Check On Facebook

It's not as easy or straightforward finding someone on Facebook for the job dispite it being a site for people. But you can search for social media marketing or social media manager on Facebook and find a lot of Pages of businesses that do that. You can often post to these or find contact details and then contact them and ask them if they can do the work. But check them out first, only go with pages that have a lot of fans/users of it and have a lot going on, don't choose pages with no fans and no recent updates as it's likely they won't be very good. That said, even some of the smaller companies and people can do the same job for you as the big ones can but it might be at a smaller price. But choosing the biggest in the game can mean you don't get someone that is likely to make mistakes and just isn't as experienced and professional at it so sometimes its worth paying a little more. Use that as rule of thumb but do make sure to check that all that user activity and egagement on their pages is real and see what kind of service they provide to people before deciding on someone on Facebook.

Seriously, this is one area that you will need to do a little more research on so that you don't end up hiring the wrong person for the job. Visit all of their own social profiles and spend some time on them. Look at their previous posts and see what kind of engagement they've done. Are there posts which people have asked questions on that they've not responded to? Do their social profiles have many fans at all? If they're claiming to be an expert in that area, why do they only have 25 fans? Are they claiming to be an authority in that area? If so, why does their blog only have one article on it that was posted 2 years ago? Are they talking the talk but not walking the walk? If they tell you they are experts in this area and say some BS to you like how they always put their clients first but don't have the time or inclination to manage their own business and social profiles and don't take are of their own business or social media pages, how can you be so sure they will take care of yours? Call them out on it!

Take The Time to Talk

If you have found someone that is interested in working with you, that has ticked all the boxes so far and seems to be an ideal candidate to take the position of being your SMM, don't just hire them straight away! Take the time to talk together with them. Schedule a time to talk to them either on the telephone or via Skype messenger in real time. Emailing is great but talking to someone on the telephone is much better. Not only can you get more of a feel for that person such as their personality and working ethic/practice but you can get a lot more said much quicker than you can instant messaging or emailing etc. Always try to go for the real talk method of talking to them on the telephone so that you can build up a rapport and bond together that will come into play later on down the line.

But talking to them first is crucial because it's your chance to tell them about your business, about what your business's plans and goals are. About the tone and personality that your business tries to maintain. They will need to know this if they are to maintain that on your social media pages and represent your business in way that's right for your business. Perhaps your business takes a more humorous approach or perhaps it's quite a serious business that takes a much more professional approach. Say you're in the health business and someone asks you a question on your social media page about some health concern they have, you want your SMM to provide them with an accurate answer to that specific question. Or perhaps you're in the medical business, they will need to know about that side of things that comes into play about it.

So talk to them before you hire! Make sure that they know about what your business is about and how you conduct yourself. If you already have social media profiles and pages set up which already have some fair activity get them to look over them and look at old posts, questions, updates etc and see how you've engaged and responded to people. They will want to adopt that same strategy.

Of course, if you don't have any social media profiles or pages set up yet, that is something they should be able to advise you on as well. They should be able to tell you where you need to be, which social media site is right for your business the most and things like what you should post and how often. Most businesses fair well with just a Facebook Page and a Twitter account. But if you want to reach more people, you might want to set up an Instagram or Pinterest or Google+ account too. Of course, you will have to discuss this with them which one you want to use and you'll also eventually have to give them the login details for them as well so they can actually manage them! That's why it's important to hire the right person.

Things to Take Into Consideration

Where are your intended audience too? Do they mostly use Facebook or would they likely be on Instagram or Twitter? Knowing who your intended audience is, can help you know which social networking site you want to use the most. For this, you will need to know a few demographics about each social networking site you use in your SMO campaigns. For instance, if most of your intended audience are woman aged between 24-30, you might want to focus more on Pinterest, but if they're mostly going to be people in the 18-24 age range and are both men and woman, then you might want to focus more on Facebook. Find out the age and demographics of your intended audience and then find out the demographics of the users on each social media site. Search Google for "social media demographics 2016" or "social media demographics infographic 2016". This will REALLY help!

Did you know?

• 58% of adults use Facebook.
  
• 23% of adults use LinkedIn.
  
• 22% of adults use Pinterest.
  
• 21% of adults use Instagram.
  
• 19% of adults use Twitter.
  

Questions: What are the best times to post to your page? When are most of your intended audience likely to be online? In the morning? At lunchtime? In the evening? Knowing this can help your social media manager know when the best time to post to your pages is. Of course, it's likely that if you have an International business, you will have fans from all around the world. So anytime can be a good time to post but it's much better to know what country the majority of your fans are so you can post around the times they are mostly likely to be on which will result in more engagement/response.


Staying In Touch

How much guidance and instruction are you going to give to your social media manager? Will you tell them about any up and coming promotions you're running? Will they have access to all the right details and links to get the information from? You may have to tell about these as and when they come up or when they're about to. The sooner the better so they are more prepared to handle it and post about it onto your social media pages with the right, relevant information. You should find a way to stay in touch with your social media manager. Whether it by email or other messaging system, by SMS text or by telephone so that you can tell them about these things or anything special or relevant to your business that you want them to post about. It's what they're paid for!

Be Upfront About Your Goals

Employing or hiring a social media manager is a big step and should be taken seriously. You don't want to hire the wrong person for the job. That could end up backfiring on you, upsetting your fans and damaging your reputation if they don't perform well or fail to post important updates, news, announcements and engaging questions to your pages about things going on in the world today. Most big businesses ask their fans and users opinions on things that are possibly related to their business and those same fans and users have come to accept and get used to this.

Be transparent and open minded, be upfront and put everything out on the table from the start. Tell them about your expectations, goals and ideas that you have. Be open and willing to hear any ideas or suggestions they may have too. Sometimes, the best ideas and most successful promotional campaigns, are those that come out of the box. Tell them that you expect them to be honest about everything and not feel like they have to tip-toe around you if there's something they feel they need or want to say such as if they feel something isn't working - have them tell you. Sometimes you might need to change tactics for a while until you find one that works best for you and your business.

So there we have it! If you think I've missed anything out let me know in a reply and I'll add it in. I'd really like your feedback and opinions on this FAQ so let the useful comments, opinions & questions flow!

Thanks,

Mike.