LOOKING TO HIRE A SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETER?

When we talk to clients unfortunately many times we hear the horror stories of hiring the wrong marketer for the job. 

As an agency against the standard "agency" model and tactics we are here to extend a hand and guide you in hiring a social media marketing team.

The term “social media marketer” can refer to a wide variety of roles and responsibilities. You might be running solo and looking to bring in someone to jumpstart your social media marketing initiative.

Or, perhaps you have an expanding business and are looking to add talent to an existing marketing team.

Hiring Your Social Media Marketing Team Member

It’s important to know what role you’d like your new hire to fill. A fully fleshed-out social media marketing team at a large corporation is often a part of a larger content marketing team. It will include most, if not all, of these roles while a small operation might include only one.

We’ll begin with a high-level overview of each position:

Social Media Manager - The lead social media marketer responsible for strategic development and execution of all social content and campaigns to increase brand awareness, engagement, and traffic. They develop social media strategy, supervise its execution, then evaluate the results, as well as manage vendor relationships and strategic partnerships.

Social Media Analyst - Collects and analyzes data related to social media marketing campaigns, assists in identifying appropriate social media channels for social media efforts, tailors campaigns to each channel’s audience, tracks the performance of social media initiatives and develops/implements changes to improve business results.

Social Media Specialist - Creates and distributes content across social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) to establish brand authority, manages company reputation, provides social customer care, facilitates partnerships with key influencers on the social web, and introduces offers where appropriate.

Social Media Coordinator - Monitors and updates social media channels, engages with the community in real-time, supports the social media team by managing the creation of engaging multimedia assets (including graphics and videos).

Graphic Designer - Assembles images, typography, and other visuals to make visual content engaging and memorable while maintaining brand consistency. Video

Marketing Manager - Creates and leverages interviews, testimonials, demos, and other storytelling styles on video format to strengthen emotional connections, engagement levels, and marketing initiatives.

It’s important to note that the positions listed above are roles, not necessarily individual people with individual titles. If you are a smaller company, you might have one person who fulfills several of these roles. In most cases, if you’re building a brand new social media team, hire the Social Media Manager role first.

The right Social Media Manager can be a “jack-of-all-trades” who handles a myriad of roles and responsibilities. When hiring a one-person social media team, look for an individual with superb social media marketing skills. Keep in mind, though, any additional skills (live video or graphic design, for instance) will be enormously valuable to a budding social media team.

Your Social Media Manager is the foundation upon which your social media team is built. Add new members to this team based on the gaps presented by your Social Media Manager. For example, your Social Media Manager may be great at posting engaging social content and driving community engagement, but not so hot at creating attractive graphics and live videos. Use your next hire to close the video marketing and graphic design gaps. Use the organizational chart below when you are ready to add specialists and expand your content team.

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONAL CHART

Your organizational chart will depend on the size of your organization, the temperament, talent, and experience of your team members (among other things), but the configuration below is a solid starting point for many organizations:

Remember, if you’re just getting started with social media, begin by hiring the Social Media Manager role. Then, add other roles as the need arises. Once your social media and content teams are fully fleshed out with multiple hires in the same roles (multiple social media coordinators, video marketers, etc.) start looking to add a Chief Content Officer to direct and coordinate both the content and social media teams.

There is always the option to hire a remote team as well :)