These days social media marketing is a goldmine for business owners looking to grow their brand, but simply putting up a company page on a few social media platforms won’t automatically translate into new business. Looking through profiles and pages on different social platforms, particularly Facebook, Google, and Twitter, it becomes clear that a lot of companies social media strategy is to just create a profile. Whether you are a big company or a small business, that is simply not the case.
A business’s social media accounts need to be carefully curated with new content creation if they want to grow their followers and increase engagement. The news is rife with disastrous social media gaffs, such as posting to the wrong account, posts from disgruntled employees to get even, or people just not understanding the full implications of the post and mistakenly offending groups of people.
The best way to grow your company on social platforms and navigate away from disastrous posts is to hire a social media expert. Below are factors to help you locate the best social media expert for your online presence.
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Experienced Social Media Expert
When you’re looking for a company to handle your social media accounts, you’ll find a lot of people claiming to be experts, but really aren’t. Since the industry is relatively new, an expert could mean they simply have a personal account on Facebook which they use to post videos of their cat but have no experience in Facebook marketing, in utilizing other social media channels, or in managing a business’s social media presence. Make sure to talk the social media expert and ask them pointed questions about how they will handle your accounts and whether they are up on the most recent social media trends. The questions you should ask will depend on your specific goals and the social media tools you intend to use, but examples include:
How many successful Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. ad campaigns have you run? Follow up by asking for more information on the specific ads they have run.
How will you use social to collect emails and increase sales?
What kind of ROI can your clients expect? Follow up by asking what kind of reporting they will provide.
How will you use social media to develop new business?
What social media accounts will you focus on for my company?
Of course, there are many additional questions, but those are a few to get you started.
Don’t be Afraid to Check Out the Social Media Expert’s Personal Pages
A huge red flag that your social media expert is inexperienced or doesn’t know what they are doing is if their social media accounts don’t show any sphere of influence. No one is interacting with their tweets, they rarely post, or have incomplete social accounts are all signs that you should move on and continue looking for the best social media expert. You want a social media strategist who is successfully managing their own accounts and has a good sphere of influence.
Ask to See Their Work
Another great way to see if a social media expert will be a good fit for your company is to ask for a list of companies who’s social accounts they manage. With that list, you’ll be able to look through the profiles to see what type of engagement their clients are getting, their marketing strategies, and see how they treat each client differently.
Find Out What the Social Media Expert Did Before
Many of the top social media experts have a history of digital marketing or business development at a marketing agency before they became social media experts. Social media experts who moved over from marketing and business development are well equipped to monitor metrics and understand ROI. They’re better able to evaluate what is working and what isn’t.
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