Filling That Social Media Job: 7 Ways to Get It Wrong

Planning to hire someone to do your company’s social media? Avoid costly mistakes by reading these quick tips.

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These days, the demand to fill social media positions can sometimes lead to poor hiring decisions. Why? Because one’s ability to use social media for personal benefit does not necessarily translate into managing it for a business. To help business owners better identify what to look for in a qualified social media job candidate, I recently interviewed Dr. William Ward (“DR4WARD”), Social Media Professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications of Syracuse University. According to Dr. Ward, these are the seven most common social media hiring mistakes:

1. Hiring people just because they’re on social media. Ward says smaller businesses commonly make the mistake of confusing personal social media fluency with social media professionalism, and there’s a notable difference. A social media professional should be able to describe how they select, curate and/or create content; how, who and why they select to follow/friend/connect with; and how they integrate social media initiatives with other mediums. Ward encourages employers to ask what kind of professional social media training and/or certifications candidates have – he finds that candidates with proper training and who demonstrate maturity make for better hires.

2. Hiring people without witnessing their social media experience. Instead of drawing assumptions about a candidate’s social media experience, Ward stresses that you want them to log into their social media accounts with you — have them show you what they do professionally. “Do not rely on their word of mouth or resume at all,” cautions Ward. Also have candidates walk you through the social media management tools they use and justify why they use the tools they do (and what other tools they may have considered and tested before selecting the ones they do – Ward’s program, for example, uses HootSuite to manage many of his students’ social media activities).

3. Ignoring inconsistencies between their personal and professional social media “voice”. Ward advises employers to check out both the professional and the personal social media accounts of candidates you’re considering — if you see breaches in social media etiquette or inappropriate conversations, posting or updates, raise a red flag. If someone is going to represent your business online, that person should also be able to demonstrate restraint and decorum in their personal social media accounts as well.

4. Not admitting to or learning from past social media mistakes. With social media such a public forum, it’s almost impossible for someone experienced in social media to not have made a least a minor mistake along the way. Ward says that every candidate should be willing to cop to some kind of faux pas, but more importantly, able to explain what s/he learned from that mistake. What you learn from their confession can also help you avoid similar mistakes, even if you don’t hire that person.

5. Not confirming their fundamental strength is to drive actions and sales. A social media professional should know how to track and translate their efforts into real world actions, how to measure the impact of these efforts, and how to refine future initiatives based on how their current activities perform. Ward recommends that you ask social media job candidates to describe campaigns in detail — which of their activities drove actions or sales and what their specific plan and outcomes were.

6. Not giving the person any boundaries or guidelines, particularly around what’s good/right/helpful for your business versus what’s not. The person who runs your social media will be bearing large responsibility for the public voice of your company…so it is up to you and other leaders at your company to establish the criteria by and boundaries within which this person should operate, cautions Ward. Don’t just give your social media hire free reign to do whatever s/he wants. Your social media strategy should align with and support your business objectives, which this person will need to understand in order to develop and execute a strategy. “I’m not a big proponent of ‘do not’s’ as much as I am of ‘do’s,” expressed Ward.

7. Not establishing accountability. If you expect a social media hire to perform to a certain standard, it’s up to you to tell them what your campaign and job performance expectations are and what the consequences will be if they don’t reach them (or if they behave in a manner unacceptable to your company). “To achieve this, you’ll need to routinely monitor the activity your social media hire does on your company’s behalf and have regular communications with him or her,” explains Ward. In other words, don’t just turn a blind eye and expect everything on social media accounts to run smoothly without your oversight.

Armed with these tips, you should be well on your way to welcoming a successful new social media hire to your organization.

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