Posting an ad for a B2B social media manager? Get ready for a flood of unqualified applicants! We ask the following 7 questions to find the best candidates.
1. Do they USE LinkedIn?
If you can’t find the candidate on LinkedIn, an immediate red flag should go up. A good B2B social media manager will have a good understanding of business development and relationship sales and have a LinkedIn profile that reflects that. If they aren’t sure how to build a meaningful LinkedIn network for themselves, they won’t know how to build one for your company, and building relationships both on and offline is a big part of the role.
2. Does anyone in your industry know them?
If you expect your B2B social media manager to make an impact, they need to be familiar with key players in your industry, and ideally, at least a few of those players will know the candidate too. If you hire someone who is not connected with anyone in your circle business, they may not be seen as a trusted resource and will have to work harder to earn business opportunities.
3. Do they know how to make a “Business Friend?“
Making business friends is not the same as making personal friends. Business friends sometimes become personal friends but more often, a business friend is made because you referred them or sent them business. Business friends have everything to do with your bottom line and if the candidate doesn’t understand what to look for and who to mingle with, you could end up with all the wrong followers.
4. Could they do this work on commission?
How might the candidate prioritize social media tasks if they were only paid a commission for followers who become clients? We’re not recommending this strategy but it’s important to point out the focus on results because it’s super easy to waste time online. The ability to prioritize activities that could translate into monetary opportunities is a critical skill of a B2B social media manager. A person who understands commission can often prioritize tasks better than a salaried person and you want to make sure the person you hire will be able to prioritize what matters most to your company.
5. Do they understand the purpose of a hashtag?
This may not seem like a big deal but if an applicant doesn’t understand how to use a hashtag, they will unlikely be able to find the best conversations online for your company to participate in. Attending business events and trade shows is a big part of how B2B companies market themselves so if the candidate doesn’t understand how to participate online during offline events, your marketing dollars could go to waste.
If your company hosts an event, your social media manager should create a hashtag for that event so others can follow along. If you are attending or sponsoring an event, your social media manager should know how to find event updates using that event’s hashtag. If this sounds foreign to the person you are interviewing, they are most definitely not the most qualified applicant for the job!
6. Do they manage their time well?
When you’re a social media manager, one tweet or post could change the entire course of your day so good social media managers are proactive about managing their time. Candidates must be aware of how long it takes to accomplish daily goals and be willing to say no to competing demands if they distract from key priorities. If the candidate often struggles to say no, they may feel compelled to react to everything online and can end up overwhelmed.
A good way to find out how a candidate might prioritize their time is to make a list of ten things important to your company and ask the candidate to put them in order from highest to lowest priority. Activities that bring a profit or could earn a business referral should rank higher than something like a weekly planning meeting. Both are important but if they only had time for one, which would they choose and why?
7. Can you send them to lunch with your very best client?
This is a deal-breaker for us. When you give a social media manager administrative rights to manage your social networks, who do you think they’re online talking to? If you wouldn’t feel comfortable sending this person to lunch with a client, why in the world would you trust them to talk to clients online?
A social media manager spends most of their time communicating with clients and prospects online and what they say could affect your company’s reputation… forever. Think carefully about who gets that responsibility.
About ThinkViral
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