7 Signs That Your Social Media Guru Isn’t Really an Expert

You are a small business owner trying to move your business to the next level. You have done your due diligence and you know that positioning your brand on social media could add lots of value to your business. You have tried building your social brand yourself in the past but you quickly found out that it was getting in the way of getting your real work done—running your business.

So you finally decide to hire an external source to help you manage your social presence. The problem is how do you know what you are really getting when everyone who has a Facebook profile could claim to be a social media expert?

Here is a list of the top 7 things to look out for when hiring a social media expert.

1. Your Social Media Guru Guarantees Many Followers In a Short Period of Time

Firstly, let’s establish that no social media marketer no matter how talented can guarantee that you will get a specified number of targeted followers especially within a very short period of time. The keyword here is “targeted followers.” Simply getting followers is not good enough if you want to see results. Your social media marketer needs to be able to connect you with the right audience for your business. If he or she guarantees ‘x’ number of followers almost instantaneously, you should be wary of how these followers may be acquired. Remember it’s not about trying to gain popularity within the wrong crowd who may not care about what you have to say. It’s about creating a voice for your brand by building meaningful relationships and conversations.

 2. Your Social Media Guru Thinks of Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing as Disparate Mediums

I am a big proponent of creating an integrated marketing approach to every marketing endeavor. Instead of thinking of marketing channels in isolation, I always like to think of how each channel can help improve the results of the other. Social media marketing and content marketing should always be linked together. Good content drives social media conversations. It’s important to identify that there is a distinction between social media content posts and having an actual content strategy that feeds into it.  So if your hired social media marketer only talks about the posts that he or she will create without actually talking about how it links back to content that you are creating on your main website, then clearly, your social media efforts might not fuel your overall lead generation strategy.

3. Your Social Media Guru’s Company Doesn’t Practice What They Preach

I’m not trying to say that every social media marketer or company that you use should have a large follower base and lots of engaging conversations with their fan base. However, the company or individual should be trying to do what they are selling.

4. Your Social Media Company Has a Website That Looks Like It Was Created Before The Internet

Seriously, if your social media marketing company has a very old-looking website that hardly ever gets a facelift, here is what it should tell you—they are not really as in-tune with the technology today as they’dd want you to believe. In today’s world where you can easily build a modern-looking website within minutes, there is no reason why someone who claims to care about the digital space should have a raggedy looking website.

5. Your Social Media Guru Doesn’t Have a Real Social Media Strategy Except Post 2-3 Times a Day

In my freelancing days, I would sometimes post jobs on freelance websites acting as if I was trying to hire just to size out my competition. An interesting trend that I noticed when running these experiments where the number of freelancers who would send supposed proposals that basically said; “here is what I think you should be doing on social media post 2-3 a day.” My question was on what topics? What’s the strategy? Your social media strategist should sit with you, take the time to understand your business, go back to do some research on what other businesses that are like you are doing in the social media space that’s working. Then, come back with a proposal that outlines how he or she hopes to promote your company using the information gathered.

6.  Your Social Media Guru Says You Need to be On Every Social Media Avenue That Was Ever Created

There are over 100 social media networking sites with a new one popping up at every turn. The point of social media is not playing with every shinny new “social media toy” that’s out there. It’s about finding where your current and potential customers interact.

When you join too many social media sites it becomes difficult to create a unique voice for each site. You end up just reposting content and it makes your company impersonal.

 7. Your Social Media Guru Doesn’t Monitor Social KPIs, Analyze Results and Improve Accordingly

An effective social media strategy is not just about posting, posting, and posting once again. It should be coupled with a way to measure results and improve upon them. Your social media guru should take the time to set up your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will be measured to track your progress. Examples of good things to measure include; number of targeted followers, number of social media interactions, posts that seem to get the most interactions, types of topics that your company is mentioned in etc.

In conclusion:

Building a social media presence takes dedicated effort and time there are unfortunately no shortcuts. Getting help from an experienced social media marketer can be a great step in the right direction for your business however, be sure to ask informed questions to find the best fit for your business.