Social media manager is an important position and there are things that business owners need to ask themselves before hiring these professionals:
- Can you Maintain it? It is important to know how to maintain social media presence. Social media is a highly dynamic platform and your current content ideas can become outdated very quickly due to recent news updates. Without enough commitment it is quite easy to put off social media updates and if you delay a bit longer, the day will pass without any update. You should know how to remain active and take the time to create quality posts. Business owners need to be honest with their commitment. They should have the real intention to maintain a long term social media presence.
- Can you Afford Hiring a Social Media Manager? Hiring a social media manager and the rest of the team will add to the operational cost. Small businesses may not have enough money to set aside to provide for basic salary and benefits for the entire social media team. If this is their situation, they may reduce costs by hiring students and interns as parts of the team. These young contract-based workers can be assigned with repetitive tasks that are easy to do, but still quite essential for the end results.
- Do you Know the Market? Business owners shouldn’t be blind to what’s happening in social media. They should learn everything possible about the field. This will allow them to employ the best content strategy possible to ensure that each post achieves the best possible results. Because you can’t always get the same results from a method, it is important to know what’s the latest method are and whether you can implement them. If you know the market, you will be able to work with social managers much more easily.
- Do you Have a Plan? Business owners are the overall strategists and they must have a general plan on how social media can benefits their companies. Social media managers are tacticians, they need to analyze the owners’ general plan and create an actionable plan, which is consisted of detailed and practical steps. The social media managers will outline what steps that needs to be performed in social media.
- Do you Have Objectivity? There’s no one more loyal to a brand than the business owners themselves. However, business owners need to use objectivity to reach out potential audience better, especially if they want to convert sceptics. Social media managers can help to achieve that. Business owners need to support social media managers to maintain a healthy dose of objectivity to gain more trust from potential consumers.
- Can you Find the Right Individual? Social media managers should have the knowledge and passion to succeed. They should be eager to gain firsthand knowledge about the operation of your business.