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Interview Questions You Must Ask Your Next Social Media Manager

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Reading Time: 6 minutes

Your business social media presence impacts greatly on your company’s or business’ success. Since social media forms an integral part of your marketing strategy, having a social media manager (or managing company) at your business is critically important. A social media manager will not only help your company stay updated on social media platforms but also create a funnel that brings leads and sales to your business. Hiring a competent social media manager is key to ensuring your business is successful. For this, you need to ask the right questions when conducting interviews or sorting through vendors.
Below we have prepared 9 important questions to ask you social media manager applicants to ensure you select the most competent manager.

1. Which Social Media platform are the best to utilize for my business/ which platforms do you recommend?

This is a good question to determine how well the social media manager knows the major social media channels. The social media manager should be able to explain how each platform works and the best strategies to use on each basing them on the nature of your business and your business goals. To have them answer this question properly you should first introduce them to your brand a day or so before the interview. A great, independent manager should then have done more research on their own to figure out what strategies that best fit your business.

2. What social media management tools do you know or have used before?

This is an important question that should not be missed. There are numerous tools around the web available to use for social media management some free, some paid, some for content management, and others for measuring results.Your brand may be using some of this tool already, but you may get a better recommendation when using this question.

A good social media manager should know some of the best tools (both free and paid) based on their usage experience and should recommend some tools giving reasons why they prefer some over others. Some of the tools are in different categories such as for content scheduling, graphics creation, data monitoring, reporting content creation, image sourcing, project management, and editing. Some of the tool they should mention include bufferhootsuitenuviedgarpost plannercoscheduleSprout Sociallatertweetdeckrespondcanva, pablopexelsEasellyInfogr.amPiktochartAdobe SparkquickmemeGiphyNuzzelBuzzSumoFeedlyQuuu.coAudienseMentionKloutKlearKeyholeCrowdfireInstagram for BusinessIconosquareSocialRankFacebook InsightsLikeAlyzerEngage by Twitter#BePresentFacebook Adsreport gardenIFTTTZapierWishpondTypeformPocketFacebook LiveGoogle URL BuilderBitlyClick to TweetCuralateHave2HaveItYotpo and Tweepi.

3. What is your past experiences and what were your achievements?

A social media manager with previous experience is at best to bring better results. If they have past experience you should ask them about what they achieved, how long they worked on the project if the project ended successfully. If they have something to show for their success, it will leave a good impression. They can share a social media platform they recently worked on, a snapshot of results they achieved, a recommendation document, or blog posts they have written. With this, you will judge how best they can work and interact with fans and maybe know where they can improve on.

4. How will you handle a reputation crisis?

Sometimes things can go wrong in your one of your brand’s social media platform. Let’s say for example bad reputation spread by a fan, a complaint, negative feedback, or negative comments on a post. Some of these are common occurrences and therefore this question becomes important, so you can find out how your social media manager would handle the crisis or the negative feedback from customers. An experienced and competent social media manager will give a great and prompt answer, and you can judge from their replies who is best at handling crises.
If your brand has a set of best practices in place, they should follow that or if not, they should mention something about how to help you create one.
5. Which are the most important social marketing metrics to monitor for business?

A good manager will know the most important metrics to measure on all social media platforms be it Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, or the others. They should mention metrics such as-

  • Engagement- engagement is one important metric to be monitored. A social media manager will realize this and thus know how to drive engagement by posting relevant and interesting posts on social media accounts.
  • Leads Generation – A social media manager should mention this metric and be able to give a track record from a paid campaign they have run. By showing the increase in potential business leads, they show how they are able to help your company grow.
  • Conversions – conversion is important in measuring the return of investment. Conversion metrics represent things like site visits, reviews, sales, and downloads.
  • Brand Reach- total posts reach and individual reach are also important metrics that show how well the campaigns and social media strategy is working. They show the total influence sphere created by your posts and what can be done to increase the reach of your posts.

6. What is ROI: how to generate and measure ROI?

Your social media manager should be able to describe what ROI stands for, what it means, how to generate these conversions, and how it is measured. Though some may say it is difficult to measure, an experienced manager will be able to describe how to achieve this with the right analytical tools. Return of investment (ROI) can be measured directly through a medium of choice, for example through sales. Let’s say for an eCommerce site and conversions (website visits, site/product reviews, digital products downloads) or indirectly through metrics like engagement, shares, consumption of brand, mentions, etc. They should also be able to describe ROI formula in terms of percentage. i.e ROI = Net Profit / Total Investment * 100. In generating this conversion, social media should describe strategies he can use to generate leads not forgetting to include social advertisements.

7. How do you stay on top of the latest updates, innovations, and new platforms in social media?

Technology is evolving and every now and then new innovations are being introduced to the social platforms market, ranging from updates all the way to new platforms getting introduced. A good social media manager should keep refining their skills and be constantly learning about the new features that get added to existing platforms and on the new platforms after which he can recommend to the company. Here at Online Growth Systems, we call it growthing, and every team member shares something new they learn every week in their field of work. A great social media manager will describe how he gets updated on the new trends let’s say, by watching tech news, reading tech blogs, following specific industry announcements, and such. They should also save time to learn about any new features added to a tool or app they use.

8. How is SEO related to social media, and if they have heard about Facebook EdgeRank?

Social media contributes highly in search engine rankings like Google. A social media manager should understand this well and have in mind techniques he/she can use to improve SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, using social media. They should at least understand Google algorithms and techniques such as having major social platforms for a company, sharing contagious content that will drive traffic, link building when sharing content, use of keywords, and Pinterest utilization. They should also have some knowledge on Facebook EdgeRank which is basically an algorithm by Facebook that limits the number of fans and followers that see a page post basing on the previous performance and fans’ interests.

9. What measure will you employ to ensure a successful social media strategy?

This is an important open-ended question that will gauge how independent and detailed a social media manager is. They should be able to describe their strategy in a step-by-step manner that is how they will plan, implement, and finally measure the results to determine a strategies’ success.
Of course in planning they should not forget to mention the things they will pay attention to such as your goals( awareness, sales, etc.), you type of audience, what tools they plan to use, what social media platforms to use, and what metrics they will need to measure each goal. In the implementation stage, they should mention something to do with calendar and content creation/ They should describing the content, type of content (links, pictures, quotes, videos), and the time planned to be posted. They should also mention if there are advertisements or contests involved. Lastly, in measuring results, they should mention how they will measure, monitor, and analyze results for each platform, what analytical tools they will use, and how they will present results.

Final Thoughts

These definitely aren’t the only questions you should ask a potential social media manager, but they are important questions you should ask to be sure you hire a competent social media manager. There are still many other questions you might decide to ask like “Why should we hire you over someone else?” or even decide to have another step where you decide to submit your shortlist into an actual test; however, these few questions give you a great place to start!
We hope this helped you hire your next social media manager. If you need help contact us for consultations.

 

 

 

 

About the author

Anthony is a guest author on the OGS team and a regular contributor to topics regarding Technology, Marketing, Social Media, and more. You can find all of Anthony's articles here on our blog.

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About Anthony

Anthony is a guest author on the OGS team and a regular contributor to topics regarding Technology, Marketing, Social Media, and more. You can find all of Anthony's articles here on our blog.

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