What To Look For When Hiring For Your Social Media Team

In today's digital age, businesses cannot simply do without social media. It is essential for your business to have an online presence to survive in the competitive market. Even if the nature of your business does not require you to conduct transactions online, people expect to see you online. You could be losing out on sales and the opportunity of increasing your customer base if you are not on the Internet.

However, building a social media presence online takes a lot of time and effort. Hence, the need for a social media team. A dedicated workforce must be in place so they can help you build your brand to the point where you have a significant reach and influence in your industry. That is why companies allot a budget specifically for social media. Other companies who do not have the luxury to set aside a budget have looked for other ways to build and keep their online presence alive. Finding and implementing the right automation tool is their suitable alternative, but still, nothing beats an all-star team equipped with social media management tools, right? 

There are a lot of things to consider when hiring people for your social media team. As mentioned earlier, the company budget is one of them. It can be a limitation or the deciding factor during the hiring process as it can influence the number of people you can hire for your team. Did you know that the average size of a corporate social media team has around 11 people? That's for big companies with overwhelming social media tasks – from creating and publishing content to analytics and reporting.

Average Size Of A Corporate Social Media Team
Source: Altimeter Group

Selecting The Right People For Your Dream Team

So what are the qualities you should look for in an applicant?

1. Passionate

When recruiting social media talents, you need to look for people who are willing and enthusiastic in learning about your business. They should be genuinely interested in the company they are going to work for because they will be representing you as a brand. They should be comfortable in doing so as they will become your voice in the online world. People who are passionate about their work are usually the ones who are driven to produce better results.

They will also put a lot more effort so they can achieve their goal. You can easily tell if an applicant is truly excited to work in this industry or if they are putting up a show based on their answers. If someone can't even give you a simple explanation as to why they want to work for you, move on to the next applicant until you find the right candidate.

2. Socially Skilled

You need someone who knows how to interact and communicate with your audience. In short, you need someone who has the social skills to engage with potential customers. They need to be able to understand the social culture otherwise their efforts will be wasted and could potentially be ignored by customers. Even if they have a good social media strategy in place, they would still need the right social skills to successfully implement it.

So, remember, if you hire someone who does not have any knowledge of the language online (hashtags, internet slang words, and acronyms) and has no idea of what the social media culture is like, you can end up doing more damage than good. You need to make sure that the person you're recruiting is well-versed in social media marketing.

3. Good Copywriter

Copywriting skills are one of the most important skills that your social media team should have. Aside from the fact that they need to write well and have mastered grammar, punctuation, and spelling, they need to be an effective researcher and interviewer. For writers to produce a compelling article, they must be knowledgeable on the topic. A good copywriter knows that a quick Google search won't do the trick.

What they do is dedicate time to study so they could learn more about the subject. They also know that there is a better way of acquiring information and that is by interviewing subject matter experts. Another quality of a good copywriter that you should look for is their knowledge about the intended audience. They can write articles that target the market you want to aim for without having to tell them as they have the initiative to do so. They can easily custom tailor the content that goes out to your social media channels.

4. Social Media Savvy

Apart from the ability to produce engaging content, your social media superstar needs to be social media savvy, meaning they should be adept or at least capable of handling various social media platforms. Nowadays, it's easy to claim to be an "expert" on sites like Facebook or Twitter, especially now that the amount of time people spend on social media is constantly increasing.

Being social media savvy is more than that. It implies that you know the best practices to maximize your social media marketing efforts and up-to-date with its features to benefit your business. An effective social media manager makes use of a social media management platform. They connect social media profiles and automate important tasks across these channels. That's how they stay on top of the all the tasks. Here's an infographic from Meltwater that shows the responsibilities of a social media manager.

Social Media Manager Responsibilities
Source: Meltwater.com

5. Technically Skilled

Hire applicants who are proficient in photo editing software like Photoshop and web application tools like PicMonkey, Canva or Giphy. Why is that? It's because of the number of engagement and interaction received with graphic images. According to Jeff Bulas, articles that have images in them receive 94% more views than those without. That’s just one of the many statistics that prove that people respond better to visual content.

So, during the hiring process, you can ask the applicants if they are able to produce eye-catching images and videos for your social media channels. It's best if you can run tests to see if they can conceptualize their ideas and if they meet your qualifications. It would be a bonus if they are skillful in video editing as well. That's the ideal candidate.

6. Great Personality

Last but not the least, hire someone with great personality. You need to make sure that the people you hire will get along with the rest of your team. They need to work together to effectively produce results. Being receptive to innovative ideas and strategies suggested by other members is also another quality to consider in an applicant. They need to maintain professionalism when it comes to constructive criticism on their work and not take things personally. They should also have patience when dealing with rude and obnoxious people online, especially if you're going to let them manage customer service. People who are experienced in handling nasty situations know how to address and properly resolve without much conflict.

Looking for the right candidate can be hard, but when you find the perfect fit for your social media dream team with these tips in mind, you will have dominating social media presence online in no time.

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