In your corporate strategy for 2017, you included the line item “Go online, get social”. Social Media is hot right now with Kenya and Nigeria trending in the 3rd place, according to Google Trends.
So, quickly, I strung together a few practical steps to help your company hire a reliable Social Media Manager which got so many commendations from Senior Consultants at Digital Media Agencies on Twitter (see link at the end of this article). They include: gaining consensus from Top Management, engaging the employees, shortlisting and interviewing.
- A consensus from Top Management: Be clear on the need to go Social and achieve a consensus at the level of top management. What we find with many organisations across scale is that the CEO or a member of the C-level team might be a huge proponent of Social Media but the rest of the team is indifferent regarding its potential. At this stage, there should be well-defined expectations and potential forecast into the ROI (Return-on-Investment) that a move to Social Media would create for the business. This means a Budget for this project — “Hiring a Social Media Manager” needs to be in place. As well as, Payback Period (time in which the investment would be recouped). Also, at this stage (or the next stage), you (or your HR team) can define what feeling you want your social media accounts to say about you — perception (such as humane, customer-focused, market-leadership). A company having an established HR department can then pass on this strategy document to them for implementation.
Deliverable: A written strategy document about the management’s decision to go social as well as expectations from the investment (ROI)
- Involve the employees (bottom-up): There is something about being regarded as a ‘co-owner’ in a project. There is this sense of responsibility it places on you. While it would be good to get Employees input, we do this by carrying out a survey to determine the most frequent Social Media Users (possible influencers in their own rights) and their primary platforms. We then gather them into a focus group to discuss our management plan to go social. Giving them the task of identifying at least ten of their preferred social media personalities for each platform (such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, FB). Management is at liberty to define (initial) criteria for shortlisting at this stage or the next. Although, I’ll advise that the criteria be revealed only at the next stage in order to have a much larger pool to screen from.
Deliverable: Formation of a task group and provisioning of the first version of the list
- Filtering and shortlisting to a smaller group of candidates: Now that we have a pool to choose from, we (management/HR) can then present criteria for screening (such as educational status, personal and professional branding of candidates, background, alignment with company culture and vision. Still working with the task group to shortlist candidates to be invited for interviews. This way, it reduces the disappointment of candidates posing as “potential Social Media Managers” meanwhile the lack the track-record to back-up their claim. Also, the chances of eventually hiring a star performer would be higher because you (as the organisation) have carried out due diligence.
Deliverable: Shortlisted candidates for Interviewing
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Conduct interviews and extend an offer: Finally, interview the person to assess their perception of the economic benefits social media avails to a business such as yours. Find out how they grew their following (one thing you should particularly watch out for is their thought process…hopefully, they think aloud). Then, ask any other company-specific questions, behavioural as you deem fit (as you’ll do in normal interviews). Eventually, make a decision to hire and extend an offer.
Deliverable: A Social Media Manager who has the personality, professionalism and qualification to deliver for your company.
In conclusion, I believe if you approach your hiring for a social media manager with such structured methodology, we’ll see better candidates, more reliable managers and good results from your online engagements. Read the full article here.