Become A Social Media Specialist

The secret is out, online marketing and social media management agencies are popping up everywhere these days. There’s no shortage of people calling themselves social media specialists, or Facebook Marketing experts.


And as with all markets that become saturated with companies selling their wares, you will find great companies, mediocre ones and those that should be given a very wide berth. So, how does someone that runs a Florist, house building or spare car parts company decipher the good from the bad?


 It can be a real uphill struggle for those that don’t have expertise in the field to know what questions to ask, and the answers to expect.


Therefore, we have written our 10 best questions along with tips on what you should expect to hear in reply, below for your reference when you are looking for someone to help you promote your business on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.


The next step is to actually optimize your website. But what if you lack the time and technical expertise to improve your site's search engine ranking? It might make sense to hire an experienced, reliable social media specialist. Whether you hire a digital marketing company in Toronto, or London, it’s crucial they answer the below social media marketing questions correctly for you.


1. How Will you Assess the Proposed Social Media Presence of my Company?


If the answer to this question is the number of likes they will get you on Facebook, then run for the door. Agencies with a better understanding of Social Media Management strategy and its connection to business and the sales channel should cover these points:


  • What channels are you currently using, and what is the performance like? They should be asking for reports and stats
  • A discussion and advice around the relevance of any channels in use, and of those being recommended. LinkedIn isn’t right for every company, just as Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter aren’t. There’s difference in each and why they would be used. A good social media management consultant will be able to articulate this
  • They should be able to advise on the followership of proposed social media profiles
  • Advice around the frequency of content publication per platform
  • Insight into the type of content (Text and images) to be used and why
  • The suggested level of audience engagement

2. Will You Perform a Social Media Audit? 


What are the factors you will look into when you audit the social media profile of my competitors?


A good social media audit will always analyze your competitors. The consultant should be able to show you a template they use for audits. If not, run.


3. How is Profiling Your Target Audience Important for Social Media Specialist?


Knowing how to identify and then target the most relevant audience is crucial to the success of any social media campaign. Knowing how to identify who this audience is in terms of age group, gender, marital status, education, profession, location etc is something all good quality social media managers should be able to help you with.


Once the target audience are profiled, then is important to find what their interests are, why they are in social networks, the channels they are present in, and what type of content will attract and engage them.


It is then, once you have this information, that your social media specialist can begin advising on the right type of content plan for the various social media profiles being recommended.


4. How Do You Make Best Use of The Various Social Media Channels for My Business?


Any decent social media specialist should be able to freely and confidently talk about the major social media channels and where they apply best, such as how LinkedIn can be an excellent channel for B2B companies, Pinterest for Fashion, Facebook as a central social media hub, and Twitter as an excellent amplification tool.


A social media consultant should be able to advise along the lines of the below channels and their best purposing.


Facebook: Should serve as the central hub of your social media presence. Facebook should be the primary source of all audience building and engagement.


Twitter: Is an excellent tool for driving targeted traffic to specific product or service related pages on your website, and also to other social media profiles.


LinkedIn: An excellent credibility builder. Enables professional relationships to be established, and for you, your senior team and your business to become known as subject matter experts and the go to authority in your given industry.


Pinterest: A picture is worth a thousand words. Visual based story telling.


5. What are the types of media that you typically roll out on social media channels?


Expect to hear advice on the following 5 elements, and how they are used in social media - audio, video, text, images and motion graphics.


6. How Do You Plan Content, Schedule it And Engage With Me On it?


Any good quality social media specialist will immediately start talking about how they use a “Social Media Content Calendar”. This calendar will be typically laid in in the format of a typical monthly view calendar that we see in our email programs, or those we hang on the wall, showing the days and date of each month. Content will be planned in advance, and displayed in the given date for which it is being planned for release.


What time of day will posts be released? Will this be consistent? Stats tell us that the best time to post across social networks is between 9am and 3pm. This is the window where you are likely to get the greatest reach and engagement.


Also ask how they plan to generate content? Will you be involved? Do you get final say? Finally, how do they post to various networks? Manually, or via social media scheduling tools such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social etc?


7. What Do You Track, And How Do You Measure Success of My Social Media Management Solution?


Back to the discussion above, we aren’t just looking for Facebook likes. You want to hear advice around tracking Audience Engagement, and possibly even conversions.


If you are a large enough organization and have the in house marketing and data crunching resources then your social media specialist should be digging deeper here and discussion the following:


Follower Acquisition: Audience growth each month


Publication Consistency and Numbers: How many times per week are posts being released, and is this consistent both weekly, and monthly, month in and month out.


Post Engagement: Items such as “Appreciation Rate” – represented as the percentage of followers who liked, favorited or +1 posts. “Conversion Rate” – number of people that replied to posts. And “Amplification Rate” – the number of users that shared or retweeted posts.


The Bottom Line: Traffic to your website. Conversions on the site such as contact form completion or a purchase being made.


8. What is The Recipe to a Good Social Media Post?


Look out for the following responses to this question:


  • Posts should start with an attention grabber that enticing wandering eyeballs. Posting questions are a good method of achieving this
  • Posts should have a conversational tone
  • Posts should have a call to action. Not always though. Don’t ram your business down the throat of social media users. There’s a healthy balance between brand based posts and general interest posts.

9. Do You Have Experience Managing Response To Social Media Queries On Behalf of Your Clients?


Big brands break their social media strategies into two distinct parts:


  1. Social Media Marketing, which is about branding and managing social media profiles
  2. Social Media Monitoring, to identify customer sentiment and opinions about your brand, and your products and services.

Point two above is what we are talking about here. Big brands have resources on the ready to provide swift feedback to social media comments be it praise or a complaint.


Obviously many small to medium businesses cannot afford the budget associated with this approach hence how will your social media campaign be monitored, how often, what days, and how will responses be drafted and posted? How will they know when to escalate to you?


Be prepared to pay for SEO on an ongoing monthly basis, typically with a fixed monthly fee. Ask if there is a minimum contract term, and if there are any penalties for ending the contract early if there are. Is there a trial period?


10. How Do You Fine Tune My Social Media Advertising and Management Solution On an Ongoing Basis?


Here, you want to hear about how your social media specialist will revise content over time. Hopefully they explain that they will evolve content based on audience engagement metrics.

At ArtClip media production we have a team of experienced, trustworthy Social Media Marketing & Advertising consultants that will take the time to understand your business, and spend time face to face with you creating a relevant, suitable Social Media Marketing Strategy to build a new sales channel and revenue stream. We’d love to hear from you.