Hire A Social Media Manager

Over 54 percent of social browsers use social media platforms to research products.

That might sound paltry until you realize that over half of millennials and Generation X use social media, not to mention around 48 percent of boomers. Missing out on substantial customer bases like these is unthinkable for your business.

To stay relevant, many businesses and brands hire a social media manager to maintain their presence on social media. However, the quality of this hire directly impacts your results on social media.

Here’s a compact guide to help you recruit the most suitable social media manager.

What’s a Social Media Manager?

A social media manager is the person you hire to take charge of your brand’s representation and interaction with the public on social media.

Such a manager’s primary role is to grow your brand through the various social media platforms you choose to invest in.

What Does a Social Media Manager Do?

The role a social media manager will handle depends entirely on your business objectives.

When you first bring the manager on board, they should assess any pre-existing marketing plan and determine its future implementation. If there are any adjustments to be made, a social media manager will spearhead the review.

Next, the manager will have to identify your band’s target audience and work up a content schedule. That implies that the manager needs to understand the ‘why’ behind your business before they can amplify it.

A social media manager worth their salt should be able to deliver valuable insights into paid advertising. They should also have a good handle on current content trends to leverage alongside the nitty-gritty of influencer marketing.

It’s the social media manager’s purview to ensure that your brand is visually represented across all platforms.

That includes overseeing the design of all visual assets for them to be on-brand and speak in one voice across various channels.

Your manager will also need to have a handle on developing and executing a conversion strategy to turn followers into clients.

How Much Will You Pay for a Social Media Manager?

Generally speaking, there are two ways to work with social media managers. You can bring them on board as full-time employees, or you can hire them as independent contractors.

If you chose to bring onboard a full-time social media manager, you should know that the national average salary is $50,473.

For independent contractors, the pay tends to vary.

To begin with, freelance social media managers can charge you a fixed monthly figure or on an hourly basis.

Additionally, you can hire a manager on a retainer or a per-project basis, depending on what works best.

Newly minted social media managers with less than three years’ experience can run you between $15 and $50 per hour.

A manager who holds three to five years’ experience in the field will cost between $50 and $100 an hour. If you desire to contract a top-shelf social media manager, you should prepare to part with $120 per hour or more.

What you end up paying a social media manager will depend on the platforms you need help in, the manager’s experience, and the type of business you have.

Tips to Help You Hire a Social Media Manager

The difficulty with hiring social media managers is not that potential candidates don’t exist, but that it’s easy to get a poor hire.

Many people think to be such a manager, all they need is to have a social media account.

What are some of the things to consider when bringing a social media manager on board who can help you win?

Does the Prospect Understand Your Brand?

If your social media presence is not consistent with your brand values and trajectory, you risk confusing your audience.

The manager you end up choosing must have their fingers on the pulse of your brand. That way, every innovative idea they execute lifts your brand value higher as it accentuates the right thing.

As you interview prospective hires, design a test to assess if they understand your brand’s backbone and adapt to it.

Can They Handle Customer Care?

There are many areas of your social media strategy you can automate, but customers aren’t one.

Inevitably, your clients will use social media to fulfill their customer care needs.

The person you hire to handle this must be adept at people skills that help them assist different customers who behave differently.

Are They Able to Handle Several Channels?

Just because a candidate understands one social platform well does not imply they will replicate the same success on other platforms.

If your plan is to leverage sewerage social media platforms (which it should be), you need someone who knows their way around several platforms.

With tools like social scheduling, a social media manager adept at using several channels can juggle them without straining.

Do They Possess Strong Collaboration Skills?

A strong social media manager typically collaborates with other team members and external partners. Therefore, you need to zero in on candidates with strong collaborative skills, especially if you’re leaning towards hiring a remote manager.

The candidate needs to have a comprehensive understanding of common collaboration tools that you can evaluate practically during recruiting.

If you find a candidate who knows how to use these tools, odds are they have collaborated with others in the past.

Do They Have a Strong Online Presence?

A social media candidate’s online presence is the irrefutable proof of what they can deliver for your brand.

An unsatisfactory online presence is reason enough not to shortlist a candidate as that’s them looking for a job without a resume.

As part of your pre-hiring checks, you should dig into a candidate’s online history to unveil their track record. What they can’t do for their profiles they will not deliver for your brand.

Don’t just pay attention to the number of people following them. Zoom in on the quality of those followers.

For example, are there industry influencers following them? That can offer greater insight into how valuable their online efforts are.

Work With Only Top-Notch Social Media Managers

Every business needs a strategy not only to remain relevant on social media but monetize it. To this end, firms hire a social media manager. However, not every person who claims they can deliver success on social media generates results. You should research to identify the right skills and traits that can help you bring on a good manager.

FreeUp works to help you find and hire pre-vetted freelancers and avoid shoddy work. Talk to us today to find social media managers and other freelancers that deliver top-notch work.