How to hire a social media manager
Last month we rounded out hiring an in-house social media and content manager on behalf of our client, Gunter & Co. While we’re certainly not a recruitment agency, helping to build marketing teams for our clients works seamlessly. Here’s why:
In the 15 years our founder, Jess has spent working in digital marketing, the social media landscape has changed wildly. It was once a completely viable option to outsource your social media to an agency (or similar) without any need to have someone in-house dedicated to it too (or a marketing manager who’s remit it is to oversee social). Especially in the last few years, there’s been a real shift in the importance of getting the content right for social and an even bigger shift in what good content looks like. While an agency is still a fantastic resource to support on strategy, run campaigns, implementation, and supporting with turning content into posts and the admin associated with social, it’s near impossible for them to do a perfect job without having someone on the ground within the business to support it.
What’s changed?
Quite simply, your audience now expects to see a certain amount of behind the scenes of your business. How that looks varies from company to company but it could include:
Introducing your team
Office / factory tours
Showing the development of your products / service
On-the-go moments within your day-to-day operation
Personality behind the brand
If you’ve got the dollar to pay for external support to help make that happen, fantastic. But the reality is that’s a very expensive way of doing social. And very few small to medium sized businesses has the capital to commit to social media in that way.
What’s the solution?
Use external support to help build you a good base on social. By that we mean consistent level of posts, a framework for what you’re posting, a steady influx of followers and solid post engagement. That will hold you in good stead to take the reins internally. Hiring an in-house social media manager is the next step. Depending on the needs of the business and what you’re overarching business goals are, this doesn’t need to be a full-time role. Part time - 2-3 days per week - would work brilliantly initially.
What’s the benefit of hiring in-house for social media?
The benefit of hiring in-house for social media, is that they will learn, in depth, all the nuances within your company’s culture, brand values, and vision - the things that are more challenging for external support to pick up on. They will get to know you inside out and back again, which should bring an unparalleled authenticity to your channels. But most of all, hiring in-house saves on time and resource.
What makes a good social media manager?
To answer this will require another post but it can be really overwhelming to hire a social media manager. Why? Because there’s an abundance of people calling themselves social media managers without the adequate credentials. Often, applicants will call themselves experienced simply by knowing how to navigate the channels on a personal level and uploading their own content. While that is absolutely a chunk of the job, your business will need someone who can also:
Be strategically savvy - they need to understand the overall needs of the business and help create a social media strategy that works towards them vs simply posting content. Similarly, they need to understand exactly who your target client is and ensure your content and channels are speaking directly to them.
Understand what metrics work for the business - if your goal is to build brand awareness, follower count, post shares and website traffic are likely to be important. If your goal is to drive sales, website traffic, engagement, and volume of enquiries might be. They need to be able to identify the right ones for you.
Knowing what makes good content - it’s not as simple as just taking lots of photos and posting them up. Your social media manager needs to be able to craft the right content for your audience. The focus for every piece of content created should be on whether or not it adds value to the end consumer or potential client. That might be lean more towards video content (so your social media manager will need to be able to take and edit video) or be more focused on stills content (do they know how to navigate a camera well?) or might require well scripted captions or voice overs (can they write for your audience?).
Finger on the pulse - social media changes all the time. You need someone who understands the landscape and is acutely following key changes to keep your business ahead of the game.
Case study
Take Gunter & Co as an example. We’ve worked with them over the course of the past 4 years or so on their marketing strategy, working to build their digital presence and grow brand awareness. That included a new website, SEO and blog content, PR, strategic support, and social media content. As their interior design studio grew from strength to strength, and their client projects became bigger, we knew that inevitably it would make most financial sense to have someone internally for social media management. As an external agency, it’s not viable for us to be available on an adhoc basis to support on site visits, be in the office, attend events, without it being a significant financial investment for Gunter & Co. That’s not something we’d recommend to any client. Knowing that we’d continue working together on strategic marketing support, it made sense for us to hire that role on their behalf.
What did we do?
Wrote the job description and promoted it on an array of viable creative channels
Handled all first round interviews with viable candidates
Wrote a task for all progressed candidates and reviewed all applications
Attended second/final round interviews with Irene and Ian of Gunter & Co and provided relevant questions for them that were more pertinent to social media
Provided feedback and acted as a soundboard in all decision making
Why did it work?
Jess & the team knows their business inside out - having worked with them for 4 years as a brand marketing consultant and helping to grow their digital presence in the way we have - from website design to SEO to PR to content, we knew what their business needed from social media possibly better than they did.
We know what makes a great social media manager - with over 15 years experience in brand marketing, we've helped strategise, run and manage accounts for brands big and small ourselves. We know how social media works within the framework of business building. This role needed someone who had the technical skills to create exceptional content but also have the strategic awareness for how content can help grow the business.
It was super time efficient - Irene and Ian are incredibly busy people. Their calendars are packed. Having them do first round interviews didn't make sense. But hiring a generic recruiter who didn't understand the nuances of their business or how the role would fit within the company's framework also didn't make sense. We were able to speak confidently on behalf of the business while asking questions that they wouldn't have thought of for a role they've never hired for before. It also meant there was no time wasted for candidates.
Streamlines continuity - Knowing we’re continuing to work together as a marketing strategy consultant, means we already know the candidate well without putting a strain on Irene and Ian’s time to connect the dots. It’s providing the base for an epic level of communication to allow us all to get the results in quicker.
What did they say?
With the support of The Doers, we knew it was time to elevate the work we’re doing on social media to better showcase our projects and our studio. Marketing isn’t something we have a strong understanding of and we knew to find the right candidate, we’d need some help. Enter Jess. She took the pressure off hiring completely - all we had to provide was the benefits package we’d be offering and a salary we’d be happy to pay - the rest we left to her. The screening of candidates was hugely beneficial both from a time perspective for us and an efficiency process with finding the right person. It was so good in fact, that we had multiple candidates who’d have been excellent for the job. She was always there to soundboard our thoughts, steer us down the right path, and help us ask the questions we didn’t know to ask. It’s resulted in us hiring someone we’re super excited about and know they’ll be offering huge value to our team and future growth.”
Ian Hazard, Gunter & Co
“It’s on a completely different level than something a recruiter would offer. Having Jess’ support with hand-holding, brainstorming and attending interviews was beyond valuable. The best part is that Jess remains disposable to us should we need help briefing our new hire in any industry-specific terminology. It’s something we look forward to being able to rely on.”
Irene Gunter, Gunter & Co
