There comes a time in every brand’s life when hiring a social media manager becomes a consideration. This usually happens once a venture begins to take off and the daily tasks become too numerous for one person to keep up with or when the abilities of the brand’s staff are not sufficient to properly execute the social media strategy needed for advancement of the brand.
Regardless of the reason for hiring a social media manager, there are 5 key things you need to know before bringing that new person on board.
#1: Know Your Goals
Before hiring a social media manager to handle your online profiles, you need to know what your goals are. What are you trying to accomplish? Are you looking for more followers? More engagement? To extend your brand’s awareness? To increase sales? To get more traffic to your website?
Chances are you were shaking your head “Yes” to all of those things. That’s because those are all very noble goals to want to achieve. However, you need to be aware that every one of those goals requires a different type of approach and technique to accomplish. This means you must understand that in most circumstances, only one or two goals can be worked on at a time.
With that in mind, you need to be ready when your potential social media manager asks what your social media goals are. Most social media managers will either ask you outright or will review what is happening with your current social media and make suggestions about what they think should be worked on first.
If you have a specific goal or goals in mind, make sure you make those goals clear to your social media manager so they can come up with a plan for meeting your expectations.
#2: Know Your Budget
Before hiring a social media manager, you must know what your budget can afford. There is no sense in having a great social media presence if the cost is going to bankrupt your business.
Social media managers can be expensive especially when hiring one that has a lot of experience under their belt. You need to know exactly what you can afford and you need to make that budget known to your social media manager.
Also, know that most experienced, professional social media managers will usually be happy to work with you when it comes to your goals and budgets. Once you make them aware of your brand’s goals, they can prioritize those goals that need the most attention first and scale the social media plan up or down to accommodate your brand’s needs and budget.
Once the top priorities are addressed, they will then move on to the next goal on the list and so on. As your social media presence begins to create more revenue for your brand, your social media manager will meet with you and the social media plan can be scaled up or down to suit the new needs of your brand.
#3: Results Take Time
One of the biggest concepts that you must grasp when it comes to social media is that results take time. Social media is not an instant fix and you won’t get results overnight regardless of who is handling your social media. If any social media manager guarantees results overnight, you need to run as fast as you can away from that person or agency.
The fact is that social media is basically a word of mouth kind of advertising and it takes time and constant effort before your brand starts to be seen by the masses. The more consistently quality content is posted to your social media profiles, the more that content will pick up speed and start to engage followers but all of this takes time.
You should know that on average it usually takes at least 3-6 months of working on a social media goal before you will start to see results. You should also know that every time you change the direction or goal of your social media campaigns, you begin that 3-6 month time frame all over again.
This is why an experienced social media manager will usually have you pick only 1-2 goals at a time. They will then review the progress of those goals with you every 6 months (or sooner if the goal is met) to decide if more time is needed or if other goals can be added to the mix.
#4: Organic vs. Paid Traffic
Many people assume that when they hire a social media manager their services include paid posts or advertising on social media platforms. You should know, that in most cases, it doesn’t.
Most of the time when you hire a social media manager you are hiring someone to write and post organic content, engage with your followers, respond to comments, and generally look out for your brand’s reputation online. All of this is a lot of work and takes a lot of time and experience, which is why social media managers demand the fee that they do.
The type of content outlined above is called organic, meaning that the people that find your page and ultimately your website, services, and products are coming to you for free via other people sharing, liking, and commenting on your social media content.
This is why encouraging everyone you know to like, share, and comment on your social media profiles and content is so important. Many social media managers, myself included, feel that this type of organic traffic is more valuable than traffic that you buy (a.k.a. paid traffic).
Paid traffic is just that. It’s content on your social media pages that you pay the platform to promote to certain audiences that you choose in order to meet certain goals. These goals can be anything from getting more likes on your page to more traffic and/or sales on your website to building your email list.
What you need to know here is that although paid advertising on social media can be relatively inexpensive, it really doesn’t start to produce results until you put at least $200 per month into it and to get optimal results it will require a minimum of $500 per month and upwards.
The money that you pay to your social media manager for this gets sent directly to the social media platform that you’re promoting your content on by the social media manager. The social media manager does not get to keep this fee. Always make sure you ask your social media manager for a monthly statement from the social media platform showing the amount paid to them.
Make sure that you factor this type of Paid social media into your plan if you are hoping to reach beyond Organic traffic. It is not usually included in a social media manager’s standard contract but it is rather an add-on to the standard contract.
#5: Teamwork
Lastly, but definitely not least, you need to know that once you hire a social media manager it doesn’t mean you can step completely away from your social media. Social media management is a team effort.
Your social media manager is still going to need some input from you and your brand on a regular basis. They will have questions that only you can answer. Thoughts about ways to further your brand’s reach that will need your approval. Questions and comments from your social media followers that they will need your response to and company graphics and information that only you can supply to them.
You, your company, and your social media manager must become a team in order to be successful and achieve your goals. Without collaboration and input from you, your social media manager can only go so far towards achieving your brand’s wants and needs.
Once you understand these five keys, you are ready to hire a social media manager and achieve your social media goals.
If you have any further questions or should you want to hire me for your social media management needs, please contact me using the contact page on this site to get started.
