If you are overwhelmed with day to day management and tasks, it might be time to hire a social media manager to help you manage your social media accounts.

Sometimes, however, it is hard to differentiate between a candidate who is really good at using their social media platforms to talk to friends and a candidate who is really good at using social media to build and support a brand.

So, what should you look for in a social media manager?

Understand The Brand

The most important asset a social media manager can bring to your brand is the capacity and desire to understand your brand, your brand’s messaging, and your brand’s long term marketing goals. The worst possible candidate is the one who comes in pretending to know everything, who comes in ready to change everything, and who seems unconcerned with what your brand is all about.

Sometimes, we can be cowed by all the shock and awe buzzwords and technical knowledge that candidates bring to the interview table but, at the end of the day, social media is just another set of tools for telling your brand story. When they are talking about their ideas, are they explaining them so that you and your likely customer will understand. No matter how good someone is at technology, social media marketing is still marketing. It will always be about explaining products and sharing stories.

How excited do they seem to tell YOUR brand story? How much are they willing to learn what your brand means and stands for? In other words, is humility one of the skills that they will be bringing to your company?

Driven By Analytics and Data

One of the key differences between a person who is great at using social media and someone who is great at using social media for business is their willingness and ability to find and interpret the available analytical data.

An excellent candidate would be able to talk at length about how best to use Google analytics, Facebook Insights, and different forms of testing for your social media marketing and social media messaging. They should also be able to talk about monitoring and how to interpret the data to improve results.

Flying by the seat of your pants is great for a personal account, but when marketing dollars and business results are at stake, you need someone with a firm grasp of the data.

Expertise That Gels With Your Marketing Strategy

Not every new social media platform is perfect for your brand, and not every old platform will remain perfect in perpetuity. But, you most likely have developed core followings on particular social media platforms and it is important that your new social media manager is adept at the right platforms. For example, if you are not targeting 13 to 24 year olds, Snapchats will not be a good platform.

What Needs To Be Done Every Day

There are many daily social media tasks that need to be done every single day from doing brand management, to maintaining a normal posting schedule. You can tell a great deal about what kind of applicant you have by just asking them what tasks they think need to be accomplished on a daily basis. Just remember that not responding quickly, carefully, or politely to a review or social media post can have real consequences for your brand. In other words, it is important to hire someone who understands daily tasks.

Responding With A Cool Hand And Head

Sometimes social media emergencies happen and your social media manager will have to be well versed in how to respond in these moments of crisis. There are best practices and they almost always involve apologizing and trying to make customers happy. Knowing and discussing response strategies in advance is really important and so is being confident that they will remain cool headed when a bad review or post hits the internet.

Ultimately, treat your social media hires just like you would treat virtually any other hire. You do need to be sure they know what they are doing but they also need to be a good fit with you and a good ambassador for your brand.