This Is How To Know If You’re Ready To Hire Someone For Social Media

I run into people or have conversations with business owners who think that they’re ready to hire someone on for social media. Their reasoning?

They know they have to do social.

That’s it.

Nothing frustrates me more than a client or potential client coming to me and saying I know that I need to have a social media how do you make it work. Now you may be thinking, well that’s me and my business.

But here’s the difference between someone like you who is reading this article and someone like them.

Business owners who say I have to do social media are coming from the standpoint that everyone else is doing it so I might as well too.

They’re not interested in putting in the right amount of money to make the right investment in their social media presence. These people also are still advertising in a Dex phone book. No joke this has literally been a client of ours before.

When I have conversations with people who understand they have to do social media to be successful typically I asked him, “what is inspiring you to now establish a social media presence?“

If they can honestly answer with “I’m ready to get serious about my digital presence,” or “I understand the value it brings my customers,” then I’m on board 100% and helping them develop a strategy that’s going to help make them successful.

You know that it’s the right time to make an investment in social media when you’re willing to pay more than $1000 for services.

Now, I thousand dollars a month for social media services is on the cheap side. I will not work for someone for anything less than $1000 right now. And I say that because most of the time it’s not worth my time or theirs.

With that said, I have a few clients who I have grandfathered into a certain kind of pricing, but we have a very clear deal that has a limited amount of work involved.

I am going to share with you the top five reasons that justify any business making an investment in their social media presence.

But before I dive into those things here are a few points as to why you shouldn’t hire someone to do social media:

• You have no clearly defined reason, you just think you need to “do social media.”

   

• Your company is floundering, and this is the last chance for you to do marketing cheap.

   

• You plan to hire someone to create a strategy for you and then hand it off to a 19-year-old intern who has a Facebook page and knows nothing about business or marketing and has a full-time job doing something else.

   

• You hired someone to manage social media for you in-house and gave them a silly name like “Master of Social Evangelism” indicating you couldn’t care less and it’s all a waste of time.

   

• You don’t have time to create content around what you do, you expect people just to guess.

   

• You’ve spent thousands of dollars on software because you thought you needed it but then never took the time to learn it and now it’s failed you.

• Your competitor is “Tweetering,” and they’re getting lots of leads.

   

• You expect a social media manager to produce the content and then market it for you, but you’re not going to give them any information about what you do or why you’re better than your competitors.

   

• You expect your YouTube infomercial to “go viral” without a marketing strategy.

   

• Now that we have that out-of-the-way let’s move onto something a little bit more positive.

   

Social media is right for you if…

You’re starting to miss messages.

The people who view your Facebook page or any other social media platform can see how responsive you are to messages. This is important because it will likely help them determine if they’re going to send you a message and if they’re going to get a response from you.

According to Facebook, you must respond to 90% of your messages with any median time frame of five minutes or less to get the “very responsive to messages“ badge on your profile.

I know for a lot of people that this is basically impossible because you’re just so busy, which is why hiring a social media manager to take responsibility for that is going to help you.

You have no idea how to utilize the platforms your audiences using

If you have no idea why Instagram is so popular with nearly everyone on the face of the planet, there might be some bigger fish to fry. But if you do you see and understand that your customers love using Instagram and Pinterest and that tends to be the area you receive most of your traffic from, it’s time to begin understanding how to utilize that platform.

If you as a business owner, don’t have time to figure that out then it’s time to hire a social media manager who does know how to utilize those platforms and reach the right audience.

You can read up on the platforms and try to figure them out for yourself, but in the end, you’re going to need to invest some time and money into someone who can either teach you and an expert level or someone who can merely execute your social media strategy for you.

It’s important to keep your business running like a well-oiled machine.

You’re working more than 40 hours a week.

This is a big one. Running a business is hard work. If you’re in the growing stages where you need help with everything, but really can’t afford to pay for the help, you’re definitely more working more than 40 hours a week. I’m right there with you.

Adding more hours on for social media is going just to make life even more frustrating. You might not need to hire someone full-time to take care of your social media if it’s not within your budget.

But you can hire someone to do a little bit of consulting for you that will help set up all of the right social media tools; Utilizing a scheduling system, getting someone to help with the content here ration, and giving you other tools to help make your strategy.

You can’t keep up with the trends 

Being a social media manager and strategist is a full-time job. It may not take a full 40 hours for someone to schedule and create/establish content on your social media platforms, but it sure does take a lot of time for them to ensure they are keeping up with all of the trends. Digital marketing is just that way.

It changes frequently, and sometimes daily. If you don’t know anything about anything and you can’t make the time to understand and learn, you need to make sure that you’re giving that time to someone else and refocusing your efforts on the things that make you money.

You’re not getting any engagement

If you’re not getting likes, shares, comments, or anything along those lines there might be a bigger problem than a social media professional can help you identify. It’s possible that you might not be posting enough, or sharing the right content, or no one is listening because of the language you use in your posts.

When it comes to Social Media, people want value. It’s not about how many times do you post it’s about providing what users want. A professional can help you crack the code.

So now that you understand you’re probably in need of someone to manage your social media here are a few things you can look for when it comes to a social media manager:

• They are organized
• They can prioritize efficiently
• They are capable of jumping into a spontaneous conversation
• They do their research
• They understand social media trends on a whole new level
• They know the importance of managing and tracking data
• They take care of their own social media profiles
• They have an understanding of how important it is to have a holistic digital marketing strategy

What are some of the qualities you look for in a social media manager?