Key Takeaways
1. Hiring a social media manager can improve your social media presence, create new revenue streams, and propel your company into great success.
2. Social media management encompasses a range of tasks that vary in complexity. The skills involved can overlap in areas such as brand creation and awareness, marketing and advertisement, community engagement, content creating and writing.
3. There are various platforms to hire a social media manager in varying capacities. You can hire social media managers full-time, part-time, or on a freelance basis via online job boards, online job search platforms or through an agency.
4. To make sure you are hiring a good social media manager that meets your expectations and company goals, it’s important to ask the right questions to really understand their experience, past success rates and if they mesh well with your company vision.
These days, having a social media presence and an ongoing strategy is crucial for companies to remain competitive, while being a great way to grow revenue streams. It also allows businesses to effectively engage with a wider market and get their name out there.
A great way for companies to grow their social media presence and take advantage of all the benefits that come with using social media effectively is by hiring a social media manager.
This article will take you through the process for hiring a good social media manager so your company can have an effective social media management strategy.
Social media management is the process of creating, building, and managing a presence on social media platforms. Although this might seem quite self-explanatory, the actual tasks involved in social media management are broad and range in complexity. In many instances, social media management tasks and skills can cross over with:
- Brand creation and awareness
- Marketing and advertising
- Community engagement
- Content creation
- Copywriting.
More specifically, social media management ultimately begins with the basic task of creating a standard profile across several platforms, then expanding into more complex tasks such as:
- Social media audits
- Social media strategy creation
- Developing social media advertisements
- Building a social media calendar
- Responding and engaging with followers
- Monitoring social media performance metrics
Some popular social media platforms where companies can create and manage a presence include:
- YouTube
Each platform comes with their own unique features like social media scheduling tools and allow your company to have access to billions of users, which can mean great success if you have an efficient and effective social media management strategy in place. To do this, companies can hire a social media manager to create and manage their social media, as well as take care of content moderation. You can also leverage tools like automated post scheduling or an AI content idea generator to reduce cost.
There are many reasons why a company may need to hire a social media manager. In industries such as tech, E-commerce, or retail, having an effective social media management strategy is crucial for long-term growth and success. Nonetheless, hiring a good social media manager can be useful if any of the following is identified in company forecasting.
- Your company currently does not use social media in any capacity
- Within the company itself, there are no internal staff that have specialized social media knowledge, or experience with certain social media tools that manage engagement and monitor Return on Investment (ROI)
- Your company uses social media, but the presence is underwhelming or stagnant
- Your company is new or wants to scale faster.
Depending on what stage your company’s social media presence is at, the costs of hiring a social media manager can vary widely. Some factors that can increase the salary expectations of a social media manager are: Where you hire them from; the candidate experience; past success rate; your company goals and your budget limit. Additionally, the complexity and scale of your social media platforms, such as the number of platforms managed (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter), the level of engagement required, and the need for specific expertise in certain platforms (like paid advertising on Instagram or content strategies for TikTok), can significantly influence salary expectations.
With the worldwide growth in social media over the last decade, the role of a social media manager has become increasingly popular as a career move. While some companies use existing staff to manage their socials, hiring a new candidate specifically for the role (whether in-country, or as part of an international workforce), is becoming more widespread.
However, as the role itself is still relatively new and the tasks undertaken can vary widely, hiring a good social media manager can be tricky: Job titles vary as well, while still encompassing similar tasks. Some job titles for social media management include:
- Digital Media Manager
- Social Media Product Manager
- Social Engagement Manager
- Social Media Planner
- Director of Social Media
- Social Media Community Manager
- Social Media Coordinator
- Social Media Marketing Manager
Before you recruit a new social media manager, it’s important you have a clear understanding of your company’s goals and expectations. You should also recognize what capacity you require them in, whether it be on a full-time, part-time, or freelance basis. You should also consider if you want them to work on-site or be hired remotely.
Here are some platforms where you can easily recruit social media managers.
- LinkedIn is considered the top place to find a large range of experienced social media managers. LinkedIn has a huge network of professionals and recruiters always on the lookout to fill job positions.
- Upwork is one of the top platforms to hire freelancers from all over the world, especially social media managers. Hiring freelance social media management can be great for companies wanting to save money
- Fiverr is a platform where remote freelancers promote their skills by creating packages that individuals and companies can purchase. On Fiverr, the key difference between Upwork and Fiverr is that jobs are specifically posted where freelancers can apply.
- You might decide you don’t want to take any risks and want to take the agency route. Hiring a social media manager through an agency will generally guarantee that you find the skills or experience your company is looking for, but can be more costly. That is because an agency will have already cross-checked the candidate when they were adding them to the books.
Although you can often find great candidates through the above avenues, success will always start with your understanding of your current social media presence and some ideas on what can be done to improve it.
NBC’s ‘Today’ looks at how the Queen used LinkedIn to source her social media manager.
It is important that when you are in the process of recruiting a social media manager, you have set goals, conditions, and a list of proposed tasks ready to go. You should also consider type of job it is — should it be in-office, hybrid, or a remote position?
The chance of hiring a good social media manager increases when things are clear from the outset.
To get a better idea of the actual experience and skillset of a prospective candidate, it is important to ask the right questions. Some questions you could consider asking during the recruitment process include:
- What brands have you worked with in the past and what were some of the tasks you undertook with each of them?
- How would you describe our company by our current social media presence?
- In your own words, how do you see our brand’s voice, and would you steer it in a different direction?
- Have you managed and engaged with followers directly in the past?
- What strategies have you used in the past to generate leads and build engagement on social media?
- What do you think are the best social media channels for our company to use?
It’s also important to understand if the candidate practices what they preach, so checking out their own personal or business social media profiles is a must. You can also ask for them to show you a portfolio of past work prior to the interview, so when you do ask the key questions, you’ll at least have a concrete idea of what they have done in the past and if their answers align.
As the role of a social media manager has the capability of being undertaken remotely, this means your search for the right fit candidate does not have to be limited to within your country’s border.
Horizons, a leading Global PEO can help your company hire social media managers from anywhere in the world, and take on the task of managing them compliantly according to their local labor laws.
Frequently asked questions
The costs to hire a social media manager can vary significantly and is really influenced by where the candidate is hired from, the capacity in which they are needed, and their past work experience and proven success rates. Hiring a social media manager from an agency can be the costliest route with rates between $1500 to $25000 a month. On a freelance basis, you can find rates lower than this, but you can run the risk of not getting the experience that is proposed upon initial consultation. That is why a good recruitment strategy that includes clear expectations can help you find a good social media manager.
Whether or not it is worth it for your company to hire a social media manager will depend on your view of the value of social media itself and what your company goals are. However, by hiring a social media manager, your company can potentially grow their revenue streams and open doors to new business directions.
