Social media marketing sometimes gets outsourced to interns — but only by misguided marketing leaders. Industry insiders know that social media marketing experts are future CMOs. They can build communities, understand fast feedback loops, pitch in on influencer marketing campaigns, dream up punchy hashtags, and drive high volumes of awareness, engagement and later, conversion.
Since Facebook was founded in 2004, social media has gone from a newfangled toy to essential communication and marketing infrastructure. You need an expert running your accounts in order to maximize your social media presence.
Below, we’ve gathered additional information to help you and your team understand this discipline as holistically as possible.
Over the past decade, branded social media has gone from a nice-to-have to a non-negotiable. Social media is where millions of people spend hours every day, which makes it the best way for business owners to reach their target demographics.
Today, social media managers (or SMMs) serve as great public relations managers, influencer marketing managers, and even content marketing managers. Their expertise and valuable insights can be applied across an entire organization, and several marketing disciplines.
Social media marketing is also an incredible opportunity to take your audience’s pulse. A TikTok prompt or a LinkedIn poll can be a great way to test people’s appetite for new products, events and messaging — or just gather social proof that people love your best-selling flagship product.
The problem is, a lot of companies aren’t using social media platforms properly. This is partly due to the fact that a lot of social media managers aren’t focusing on the right channels for the business in question. Additionally, many of them aren’t well-versed in the relationships between promoted and organic social, and can’t build a growth loop between, for example, Facebook Ads and organic Instagram, or paid and organic Snapchat.
Too many simply use it as a way to pump out promotional blog posts and webinars, or post pictures of cute but random office dogs.
That’s where MarketerHire comes in. As marketing experts ourselves, we know what makes a great social media manager, and we only accept the very best into our expert network. We put our social media manager applicants through a rigorous vetting process, and dig into the impact they’ve made on key metrics. That’s why you can be sure any freelance social media specialist we match you with will be able to execute your social media marketing strategy quickly and effectively.
Or, if you need a social media marketing expert to help you build a strategy in the first place, we’ve got you covered. From social media marketing strategy, channel analysis, influencer marketing, and more, our social media specialists are ready to help your brand engage larger audiences on social.
There’s a lot going on in the world of social media marketing – multiple platforms with multiple strategies and tactics you can leverage, depending on your business goals. If you try to be everywhere and do everything, or posting aimlessly and inconsistently, you’ll just burn time and money.
You need a cohesive strategy to see results. That means clear metrics, clear boundaries, and clear goals for social media. An expert social media manager can help you build a solid, multi-channel plan whether your goal is improving brand awareness; engaging with customers; increasing site traffic, or even enhancing SEO rankings.
They’ll figure out where your customers spend their time, and which of those social media networks best suit which messages. If you want to share educational content and increase site traffic, they might recommend one platform; if you want to share industry trends, they might suggest another. They can even help you get your employees on board as brand advocates, sharing what the company is up to as well as their own thought leadership.
Additionally, prospects and customers tend to use social media when they have a question, issue, or simply want to spread the love about a particular business or product. You can use a social media marketing strategy to engage with them in real-time, connect them with your customer success teams, and funnel their feedback into your product roadmap. You’ll boost brand loyalty and engagement by making your audience feel heard on social media channels.
Social media is ever-changing, so years of experience isn’t enough — social media managers need to be curious, adaptable, and business savvy. MarketerHire vets for all these intrinsic qualities, but we also make sure our social media managers have skills in the following areas:
Don’t even try handing off your social media marketing efforts to an intern or entry-level hire. Today, almost every brand is on social media, and the algorithms are changing constantly. The competition for eyeballs is fierce, and what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow.
You need a best-in-class social media manager who’s on top of marketing trends to help you reach your goals.
While social media does fall within the category of digital marketing, it is its own beast — and expert social media managers are worth their weight in gold. That’s because running successful social media accounts for a business requires constant quick, expert judgment calls.
Social media managers need to know how a given channel works — at any given moment! — and they need to be able to hop on social media trends before they turn uncool. They need to create a wide variety of timely social media content, and speak fluently in your brand voice — so they can reply to followers promptly. They also need a professional network of influencers, and the ability to manage a disparate team of freelancers including graphic designers, content marketers and more.
Sure, if they’re lucky, your current marketing team could make a one-off splash on social — but hiring a social media manager who really knows what they're doing will help you build an engaged audience that lasts.
Here are the top five ways to know if you need to hire social media help, ASAP:
When you’re growing a startup or small business, it’s tough to forecast your revenue and make the right full-time hires. Your needs and budget are always changing — and a full-time social media manager might feel financially risky.
Which it is. Hiring is also a time-consuming process — if it weren’t, recruiters wouldn’t have jobs. It can take months for you to find a great fit, and even when you think you have, there’s some guesswork involved. If you’re not a social media manager or expert yourself, how can you really know if you’ve vetted for the right skills?
Too often, businesses invest a ton of resources in making a full-time hire only to learn they made the wrong call months later –– resulting in a poor return on investment.
Some businesses understand and value the flexibility of contract work, so they go to agencies to service their needs for a set period of time. The trouble with this is businesses typically have limited resources, and exorbitant agency pricing often only brings in lackluster results. You’re just one of many clients for them, and monthly retainers can truly break the bank, especially if you don’t meet your revenue goals for a month or two.
Freelance hires are more cost-effective, and come with much more room to iterate. But with the freelancing industry growing ever-bigger and more popular, it’s hard to find the qualified candidates in the crowd. Plenty of freelance marketers claim to be experts in particular verticals to get more work, but after a project or two it becomes evident they’re not.
Luckily, that’s where MarketerHire comes in. Our expert network of pre-vetted talent makes hiring a freelance social media manager a no-brainer.