Everywhere you look, there is someone popping up calling themselves a “social media consultant“. While there are many reasons for this, I will only address a couple to save time. The first and most obvious reason anyone would want to jump into the social media game is because social media is fun. One of the most frequent objections I got when I first started up POSTfuser was “but I like doing it myself, it’s fun”. The second most popular reason there are more and more social media consultants popping up, is there are “business in a box” info marketing programs everywhere you look. Any time you look on facebook, twitter, LinkedIn etc… there is always some ad for a “get rich with social media” ad. People easily buy into the sales pitches and think that just anyone can do it. After all its “fun” social media right? ehhh So now that you have a little perspective on where all these consultants and managers are coming from, let me give you a few items to look over before you hire one. If someone is going to run YOUR social media, don’t you want to take a look at their “online resume”? Here are some simple steps to covering your ass when it comes to hiring someone to run your social media.
Step 1: Go to Klout and type the person’s name in the search bar. Klout is a scoring system for online personalities. Even if you don’t have a klout account, as long as you are somebody, klout will give you a score. You can sign up for free while you are there. Also give me a +k for sending you there. Once you find your consultant on klout, you want to make sure they have a score of 50 or higher. The higher the better. The average klout score is 40. So 50 is not asking for an overachiever. Klout judges your score by how many people interact with you on social media. It measures the amount of re-tweets, likes, comments, shares and more. Most scores are between 40-60 and it is extremely hard to get above 70. Klout is not the only place to double-check your consultants capability though…
Step 2: Head on over to linked in and take a look at their profile. LinkedIn is so freaking cool, you can actually see if anyone has endorsed their work or what their past jobs were. This will let you know if they are FOR REAL or not. If they worked at a, let’s just say, not so high-end job or has no history of marketing at all, you may have a problem.
Take a look at the things they talk about on LinkedIn. Is anyone commenting with them, do they even post. How can you expect them to post for you if they are not posting them selves? These are all little clues that will help you make a more informed decision when it comes to spending money on a marketer.
Step 3: Take a look a their facebook page. Not the company page, their personal profile. Do they post on there? Are they your friend, did they accept your request? The best managers and consultants are open networkers. This means we accept all requests.
You want to see what they talk about personally. Take a look and see if others are engaging in conversation with them. You want a social media consultant that will lead by example. How can someone tell you what to do, if they don’t do it themselves? The key to social media is the engagement. Bottom line period. You need a manager or consultant that can get the conversations started online. When you hire an outsider, you are putting your company in the hands of someone not liable. You want to make sure that someone is THE BEST at it, or you will have wasted time and money. If you want to know more about what it takes to get your social media where it needs to be, simply go to www.POSTfuser.com and take advantage of one of our free offers. Our goal is to educate the masses so the noise level online is filled with good noise, not “annoys” Enjoy the rant:
