So you know social media is an important part of growing your business and you’re ready to hire someone. Fantastic!
I’ve worked in house leading marketing teams at startups, held a variety of freelance and contractor roles, and have worked at a few marketing agencies of varying sizes. In addition to this while I was working in house at my last startup, I hired full time employees, contractors, and managed our marketing agency relationships – so if anyone has the answers for you it’s me!
Here are four key questions you NEED to ask yourself and know the answers to before you even start looking for your social media hire.
- Do you know anything about social media marketing?
Would you be able to give direction on the content topics and ways to communicate your unique value proposition in a way that connects with your customers?
- Do you have an existing marketing team?
If you can’t provide the guidance, does anyone on your team have experience and familiarity with social media marketing? Can they provide coaching and feedback to a junior hire?
If you don’t have any marketing leadership on your team, hiring someone with experience building multiple accounts is important. If you hire someone junior who doesn’t have experience – who’s going to train them? Who’s going to know how to improve what they create? Help with roadblocks?
If you do have marketing leadership and experience on your team, but just need someone with expertise in content creation and / or social media marketing – you can likely hire someone more junior.
- Are you hiring for expertise or to save time?
Do you have social media expertise on your team, but need someone to help take the more low level tasks off their plate? Or do you need someone that can dive in, see the best path forward, and own social media from strategy to content creation to management?
Of course, time is also a factor here. Training and coaching more junior hires will take time.
- What type of content do you need?
Are you a luxury product business who needs professional photo and video content? Or are you a software company that would be better suited for UGC style videos? Do you have a designer or do you need a social media manager who can also create graphics?
The key here is to identify the key skills you need in your social media manager, and the level of expertise.
If you need someone with highly specialized skills and experience, hiring a freelancer or agency might be your best bet.
If you can hire someone more junior to assist with implementation and execution, where your main need is to save time and you have marketing experience and leadership on your team – an entry level full time position may work best!
Need assistance making sure you make the right hire? Or need an experienced strategist to guide your new hire with best practices and feedback? We’re here to help! Send us a message!
