You Need to Hire a Social Media Expert. Now.

Today’s guest blogger is David Chapman from Webrageous.  You can learn more about him and his work at the end of the post.

When the world of social media began to develop only a few years ago, networking online was all about connecting with friends, sharing personal likes and dislikes, finding out about new things to do in our personal lives.

The mocking snorts and disbelieving grunts began we people started to use social networking at work. And fair enough really. Change is always difficult. The world always needs time to readjust. How can being connected to Facebook truly be considered work?

Well, to be totally honest, social networking is work. The time has come in the 2010s to finally put a stop to the fact that some people still look down on social networkers in many ways. It is disappointing that a good number of leaders still fail to realize that investing good money in the recruitment of a professional social networker is worth every cent in this golden age of technology.

Every single business needs an effective social networker and every leader should be prepared to pay a decent salary to employ the best of the best. It takes more than a few posts or tweets here and there to be an effective social networker and the employees slaving away at all hours of the day and night in this newly developing industry deserve economic recognition for their efforts.

So…

Why hire a social networking expert?

1. There is an endless stream of information and trends on the Internet that are happening in your industry and it is difficult to keep up unless you have someone who is actually responsible for simply staying on top of the game.

2. A social media expert can research into your competition (their contact with the target audience and the different ideas that they are promoting about their businesses) to evaluate what your company is doing right, but also what needs to be improved and updated as well.

3. Your social media expert will engage on a one-to-one basis with your audience and generate a more personal connection that will help to create trust and loyalty with your brand.

4. If someone gives your company a bad review, you will find out about it fast with a full time social network expert on board and you will be able to repair the damage quickly with social media posts, updates and responses that dispel the negative information as quickly as possible.

5. Social media experts can utilize their positions in the social media world to make further deals, partnerships and sales through forums, direct email contact and community post sharing.

6. Social media work can help to better market the content you have on your website and help send more traffic to your site as a result.

What kinds of qualities or experience should your social media expert have?

When interviewing a social media expert, a leader needs to ask the following questions:

1. How long have you been a user of social media?
If they were quick to jump on the social media networking bandwagon and they have been working in social media since more or less the very beginning, you should seriously consider hiring them.  Their early adoption of social media networking suggests that they have an interest in the new and will remain abreast of new developments at all times.

2. When are you connected?
The answer is, “always!” Your social media expert should be the kind of person who tweets at 3am in the morning because they have just read something so fantastic that it has to be shared with the world.

3. What social media networking functions and features are you aware of?
If your potential social media expert knows nothing about incorporating hash tags when tweeting, how to use various tools to shorten links or what the initials “RT” stand for, they are not a social media expert and do not spend enough of their time consumed in the world of social media networking. You want to hire someone who knows a lot more than you do.

4. How much experience or knowledge do you have concerning my business’ industry?
Whatever your industry you need to hire a social media expert who has some idea about what it is that you do. Otherwise it is difficult for them to promote your work and find people to whom they should be promoting it.  Detailed knowledge is not necessary. They can learn on the job with your help, but basic knowledge should be a requirement if you want to find the most effective social media expert out there.

5. Are you curious about new tools and platforms? How do you satisfy your curiosity?
The only possible answer to the first part of this question is “yes.” If your potential social media expert says “no,” then do not hire them.

How should you successfully manage your social media expert?

In most cases, the social media expert works remotely so how do you manage them, set deadline and focus their work?

Daily: Every day, the social media expert should answer inquiries, reject negative portrayals of the company with proof to the contrary and post new information. Links to all their work should be sent to you.

Weekly: Ask for weekly reports which show your business’ online profile against that of your competitors. This shows they are aware of the industry in a wider sense.

Monthly: Every month the social media expert should run analysis of your business’ social media statistics and find reasons which explain rises and falls in social media activity to optimize your campaigns further.

In short, now is definitely the time to hire a social media expert if you have not already done so, regardless of company size or the industry in which you work. It is also high time that you invested money in your social media employee too. They are worth every cent when you employ the right one.

– David Chapman writes for the Webrageous expert online advertising blog, where more information about pay per click advertising, search engine optimization and related subjects can be found on a daily basis.