Posts Tagged: Mhairi Petrovic
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 13th, 2012
Many businesses fail 
when it comes to social media. Why? Because organisations don’t give due consideration to strategy before they start. A social media strategy can be as long or as short (on the back of a napkin!) as you want it to be, but it should take into account and reflect:
- Your brand, message, corporate mission and vision
- Your target audience
- Which tools you will use and who will do what
- Quantifiable goals and tools to measure success
- Content – how will you add value
- What needs to be done and when
Here are 9 important factors that you need to consider when building and implementing your social media strategy:
1. Your strategy on-line must be reflective of your overall business strategy
Successful social media strategies augment your existing business plans, reflect your brand, goals and target audience.
2. Take a holistic approach to Internet marketing
Your Internet marketing should include your website (as the back bone), email campaigns, SEO, SEM, online ads and mobile marketing. Each component should cross pollinate with the others (i.e. your website should be social media ready, and the words you use in your website content should be similar, or the same, as they keywords you use on Facebook, Twitter or your blog).
3. Choose your social media tools wisely
There are thousands of social networks and you can’t use them all, so choose 2 or 3 and use them really well. When deciding which tools to use, consider which tools your target audience is most likely to use, which tools best reflect your offering and which tools you will have fun incorporating into your online strategy.
4. Start small and grow
Identify one area of business and run a pilot. Doing so will allow you to test the waters in a manageable way, allowing you to prove concepts and build.
5. Social media education
Education should be an ongoing consideration and component of your social media plan. Educate your staff and executives as to what social media is, how to use it effectively from a business perspective and make sure to keep abreast of new tools and methods.
6. Make it measurable
What you can’t measure, you can’t manage. Take time to consider what are your goals from implementing social media, quantify these and determine which tools you will use to track effectiveness. There’s a wide array of social media measurement tools out there and many of them are free – use them!
7. Create a social media policy
This is important. Every employee should know what is expected of them, what to post, and what not to post, when using social media on behalf of the organisation. Creating policies that build best practices helps ensure that everyone is on the same page.
8. Content is key
When it comes to social media you need to remember that it’s not about you but, instead, about your audience, and this is especially true for content. Make sure that your content adds value for your audience, doesn’t overtly sell and makes people want to share it with their networks too.
9. Listen
Social media listening should be ongoing from day one. Listen for mentions (and respond!), keep an eye on competitors, peers and luminaries.
Here at Out-Smarts, one of our core services is working with clients to build and implement effective social media strategies. You know you need one, so contact us now!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 03rd, 2012
We’re long overdue for a dose of cheer. Here are links to some of the online gems we are enjoying and exploring right now.
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks right now. It allows you to pin, organise and share images online. It is very visually stimulating and fun. Watch this space for a more in depth post all about Pinterest and feel free to follow me there.
We’ve been exploring online tools that allowyou to create simple graphics. We like Gimp, Aviary and Pixlr – there’s also “lite” version of Photoshop if you can find it.
Edge Rank Checker is a tool that allows you track the effectiveness of your Facebook pages but beware – it takes ages to generate your reports and pages with low fan counts will be skewed.
Mobile apps we are loving include: Ego (check web stats on the go), Flipboard (Social Magazine) and Evernote (to help you remember everything).
Want to customize yor Facebook page? We’re currently evaluating Shortstack, FaceIt Pages, North Social and Page Modo. If you have used any of these and have a preference we’d love to get your feedback.
And now some social media tools: Echofon (never read a tweet twice), Buffer (add posts and “automagically” post them through the day), CoTweet (manage mutliple Twitter feeds).
Enjoy!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, January 18th, 2012
A lot has changed the five or so years that Out-Smarts has been focused on social media marketing. For a start, most people now know what Facebook is, many are even using it for more than “being social”. Studies show that 60% of all Canadians are using social media and 44% of small to medium sized business decision makers use social media, but are businesses using it the right way to build their online presence strategically? In many cases, they’re not. Here are the top 10 mistakes that companies make when using social media.
1. Not taking social media seriously
There’s over 800 million people using Facebook, and over 200 million Twitter users - not to mention, a similar number of folks on LinkedIn, and yet many businesses still dismiss social media as a flash in the pan. Your business has the potential to take advantage of this massive online hub; ignoring it is a huge folly. You don’t have to start with a presence of your own if you’re not comfortable. Using social media to listen to, and learn from, others in your industry can be a valuable research method, and it is also a great way to get a feel for how social media is used in your sector.
2. Ignore it and hope it will go away
Back in the early nineties when I sold Internet technologies, lots of companies weren’t convinced that the Internet would take off, so they ignored it and hoped it would go away. Many were left scrambling at the last minute to catch up online and some didn’t survive. A hundred or so years ago many naysayers dismissed the phone. The same story is now replaying with regard to social media. Don’t stick your corporate head in the sand – social media isn’t going away and the sooner you accept that, the less risk to your business.
3. It’s only for small business
I’ve read a few articles recently that write off social media off as a tool that’s only useful for small to medium sized businesses. Many large, established businesses use this as an excuse because they have done things the traditional way for so long that they know no other way. However, pioneers like Whole Foods, Southwest Airlines and Ford are proving that social media can be a driving force for larger organisations too, if it’s done right.
4. The Intern can do it
Many organisations get a young intern to maintain their social networks because this person has hundreds of Twitter followers, or is on Facebook all the time. However, just because you are familiar with using these tools socially doesn’t mean you know how to use them for business. I am not saying an intern can’t do it, but you should make sure that they understand your goals, mission, audience, brand and such first, so that they can represent you appropriately online.
5. Failing to consider company strategy
Point 4 leads me nicely to point 5 – not approaching social media from a strategic perspective. Only 8% of companies surveyed in a recent Forrester report are using social media in ways that tie in with their corporate objectives. Again, companies often embark on using social media for the sake of using it rather than using it from a strategic perspective. Before your company sets out on the social media path you should ask – who is your target audience, what is your message, which tools are right for your business given your brand and mission, and how can you use social media to augment your everyday activities. If you do that, your social media efforts are more likely to amount to something.
6. It’s all about you
In the old business world, marketing was all about corporations; all activities centered around the product and service, and not the consumer. Every message had to be vetted – which took time and meant the the company was in control. Many organisations take this approach to social media, and then wonder why they are spending lots of resources but have few results and little return to show for it. They aren’t succeeding because they need to re-engineer their approach. These days, it is not about you, but rather, it’s about your audience and every social touchpoint should reflect that. To be effective in social media you need to focus on your target audience, be able to move faster, and to communicate in the moment before content gets outdated.
7. Blatant selling
This is the biggest faux pas you can make with social media. Never use social media to blatantly sell. It is okay to promote your offering, but in your face selling is off putting. Here at Out-Smarts, we use the 80-20 rule – 80% of our posts are aimed at adding value, and only 20% are promotional.
8. Failing to set goals and objectives
As with any other business function, you should set goals and objectives before you start rather than haphazardly setting up your social shop (as it were). What is it that you hope to achieve? You may want to build community with your target audience, extend your reach to new communities, use social media as a conduit to extend the reach of your content, drive traffic to your website, etc. Whatever your goals are, you should document them, quantify them and make sure that they are achievable.
9. Failure to measure success
Many companies have no idea whether their social media presence is benefiting them or not, nor are they able to respond to what is being said about them online. Once you’ve determined your goals, you should put in place tools that allow you to measure your success and to listen effectively. These might include free tools – for example; for web traffic analysis you can use Google Analytics, to measure your Facebook following use Insights, for Twitter use counters or paid tools like Radian6 that allow you to monitor and measure engagement.
10. Failing to take a holistic business approach.
Up until recently, many businesses have looked on social media as a stand alone approach rather than considering it as a way to complement and augment their entire marketing strategy. 2012 is going to be the year when the penny drops and companies realise that the best social media projects are those that complement their real world activities.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 14th, 2011
QR codes (or Quick Response codes), those little black and white squares that look like crosswords, 
are appearing everywhere: in magazine ads, on product labels, on bus stops, you name it. If you scan them using your smart phone you are taken to a related webpage (without having to type in the URL). I blogged about them a year or so ago and have watched with interest as they proliferate. Marketers love them but are the really resonating with their intended audience? I decided to find out.
According to a recent Comscore report, 14 million Americans scanned a QR code using their mobile device in the month of June. So people are using them but it is interesting to note that the main demographics were males aged 18-34 in the high income bracket – so be cautious in using these if your target markets differ from these. Another recent report in this CNN article in the US surveyed students and only 2 out of 10 even knew what a QR code is.
QR codes are a great marketing tool in theory but using them is far from a seamless experience. In the last week I scanned several QR codes and have been frustrated by the lack of compatibility between the QR scanner on my phone resulting in the appearance of error messages rather than taking me to the enticing, targeted websites I expected to see. Of the 10 or so codes that I scanned only one worked seamlessly to launch the intended web site – the rest I gave up waiting on and couldn’t be bothered to download another barcode app that would work.
Here’s an example: I ate out recently and saw this QR code being used in at the MAC Shack in Kerrisdale so in my quest for QR knowledge, I decided to scan it to find out what my prize would be. Sadly I never found out because the app failed to launch properly, I ended up frustrated, annoyed and hungry for more. It didn’t put me off my mac cheese thankfully (nothing could) but it did give me some food for thought.
In this case, I only wasted a few minutes tinkering around trying to get it to work but for the marketer who devised this campaign, their time in putting this together was rendered useless (I’m assuming that I wasn’t the only one that tried to scan it in vain). There are far better ways to build your audience (tried and tested ways) that work. Not only that but from a marketer’s perspective when your audience is expecting something and they don’t get it (or it fails to work), what does that say about your organisation. It’s all about the optics. If you can’t get it right then why bother wasting your audience’s time.
Sources in the telecom industry tell me that the next generation of phones will be able to scan these automatically so the problem of unstandardized apps may go away but in the meantime, marketers should give close consideration to their audience and to making sure that their QR codes work seamlessly with as many of the readers as possible. Otherwise, it might be better to consider more tried and tested methods to grow your community. Don’t get me wrong, the potential for QR Codes is huge and one day they will be a marketing tool that you can’t ignore but for now not so much.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 09th, 2011
Not a bad view!
We’re feeling all grown up here at Out-Smarts – like we’ve come of age or something. After almost nine years in business we’ve made the leap from the virtual office to a bricks and mortar premises and it feels good (I knew that it would). It’s a big milestone for us and we are just settling in – adapting to life in the office is going to be fun.
When Out-Smarts (Outsmart Sales and Marketing Co. as it was called then) was founded in 2002, I had the idea that it would be neat to be location independent and be able to work from anywhere. For the last 9 years I’ve worked from coffee shops, beaches, parks, arenas – you name it. As we grew; Corrie, PJ, Jan, Sam, Prianka and Jose all work(ed) from their virtual locations, aka from home, and it worked really well for us.
So why did we finally cave in to the more ‘normal’ work set up, and have we taken a step back in time, or what? We haven’t, we still have home offices and spend time meeting in coffee houses and being virtual, but there comes a time with a growing team that it becomes more productive to be sitting close to your colleagues. As well as to have a boardroom to bring clients, and a place to train.
The boardroom
When our friend and mentor over at Raspberry Kids, Sue Sinclair, mentioned that we should check out the space Xomo (her husband’s company) were subleasing, we were initially wary. However, when we came to see the office and found that not only does it have a Skype screen in the boardroom, but also a touch screen too (not to mention Indian food on Thursdays and beer Fridays) we were sold on the spot.
We moved in last week, sharing the space with the lovely Leigh Striegler, our design partner from Olive Design. Our office has wall to wall windows, a view of the mountains and, even better, Granville Island is just steps away (so we will never go hungry). We’re still moving our furniture and equipment in (and around) and settling in – we have no art on the walls, yet.
Celebrating our first office
Some things change and some remain the same. Out-Smarts is still a progressive organisation (lifestyle means a lot to us!). As long as the work gets done and our clients are uber happy, it doesn’t really matter when or where we are, but it’s extra nice to go into the office and find that your colleague has baked a cake to celebrate (not so easy when you’re virtual). Did I mention that Corrie is a cake master?
Our new office is located at #202 – 1650 West First Avenue. You should pop by for a visit.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, September 30th, 2011
One of the biggest challenges small businesses face is finding the time and resources to do it all. As entrepreneurs we all wear different hats, juggle ever expanding responsibilities and this can be a huge challenge. Crowdsourcing is one way to alleviate your burden by having other people assume some of those responsibilities or tasks.
What Is Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing according to Wikipedia is ‘the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a “crowd”), through an open call.’ Interestingly, Wikipedia itself is a great example of crowdsourcing online- all of the content is input and administered by people like you and me across the globe who have insights and knowledge they want to share. But, I digress.
The proliferation of the Internet and social media brings the ability to tap into the collective knowledge more easily, and this has been the catalyst that has really amped crowdsourcing’s viability from a small business perspective over the last five years.
Two Approaches to Crowdsourcing
There are two approaches to online crowdsourcing for business.
1. Formal Crowdsourcing – this is organised, structured crowdsourcing where service providers are connected with potential projects and opportunities through a facilitator like Vancouver’s Hire the World. Similar to outsourcing, crowdsourcing takes the activity of farming out specific tasks or requirements and taps into the online population for both the fulfillment and, in more and more cases, the feedback on decision making.
E-Lance has long been in the business of facilitating the outsourcing of work online. If you need a logo for example and have limited resources it is a great place to start to find the right design for you. Over the years however, online outsourcing has evolved to encompass the crowd as participators throughout the fulfillment process.
2. Informal Crowdsourcing – this is something that you might have done without even realising or thinking much about it. Have you ever asked a question on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and received answers? More than likely you have. Congratulations, you just crowdsourced.
Let me give you an example of informal crowdsourcing. Our website recently had some issues. We found out about it as a result of a post on our Facebook page from a follower who had been trying to access one of our blog posts but, try as he might, he couldn’t get the post to load. We tried to recreate the issue internally but couldn’t so we put the word out on Facebook and immediately our “crowd” went into action. Within about 10 minutes, thanks to feedback from followers, we were able to isolate the problem to MAC users (one follower on Twitter even suggested that there was an issue with some specific code on our site) and to quickly and easily rectify the issue at no cost and with little effort. We were able to fix the problem in a matter of minutes and get the website up and running again, all thanks to crowdsourcing and the Out-Smarts crowd
Which crowdsourcing approach you take will depend on the challenges you are facing and the task at hand. Crowdsourcing can be used for everything, from something as simple as getting directions to the best Italian coffee house in Gastown for an important meeting, to researching your market, getting feedback from clients, learning about new technologies, getting design, admin or other work done, to asking your clients for feedback on your products and services. The only limitation might be your imagination.
The Risks of Crowdsourcing
With crowdsourcing, the possibilities are endless but, as with every approach, there are risks that should be taken into account. In order to identify these, I crowdsourced by asking a question on Quora and LinkedIn (you can click to read the responses). Luca Hammer on Quora (thanks Luca!) pointed out that you shouldn’t use crowdsourcing for sensitive tasks, should be able to define the task appropriately so that response meets your expectations and that you don’t always know who you are working with and whether they are trust worthy. To this I would add that you should always verify for yourself any information and feedback that you get when using crowdsourcing as a research tool and always do some due diligence to protect yourself from the risks when tapping into the collective.
The Internet connects billions of people worldwide, each individual has skills or knowledge but in isolation their knowledge can only impact their direct circles. With enhanced communication capabilities and social hubs that connect people, being able to source the collective to get work done, to make decisions and to be more productive becomes possible through crowdsourcing.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 17th, 2011
Advertising on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is becoming more and more popular. A recent Pivot Survey showed that two thirds of marketers surveyed are using social media advertising. This will only continue to grow as more and more people join the ranks of social media users, and companies catch on to the highly targeted and effective nature of this medium.
Often called social advertising, this method (based on a very old approach) takes advantage of the growing number of people using social networks (700m on Facebook, 100m+ on LinkedIn, etc) to advertise to people in a highly targeted way – usually according to their likes, geographic demographics and other defining characteristics. It can be a really useful tool to drive traffic to your website, and especially to build your connections because each follower or connection has given you their implied permission to keep in touch, and are genuinely interested in what you have to offer.
Here at Out-Smarts we always emphasize the importance of strategy when it comes to any social media or internet marketing project, and social ads are no exception. First of all, you need to consider your audience. Who are they and which networks do they use. This will help you determine whether to use Facebook, LinkedIn or another network. Next, you need to consider your goals and how you will measure success.
We were approached recently by a client of ours who had (as an experiment) run simultaneous ads on Facebook and on LinkedIn. The ads were almost identical but whilst the Facebook ad had a phenomenal click through rate, there was not a single click through on LinkedIn. They wondered why this had happened, and how the could track whether the Facebook ads converted to actual business for them.
There are two issues here, the first being the target audience. The reason they were more successful on Facebook is that their target audience is much more likely to be on Facebook, and using it on a regular basis, than LinkedIn. When you are considering which social advertising forum to use, it is always important to consider which tools your audience uses – doing so will help you cut to the chase and will make the likelihood of success higher. If your product or service is aimed at a consumer or broader target audience, then Facebook is going to be better than LinkedIn. If your product or service is business-to-business then LinkedIn will be the way to go. If you have a large brand aimed at the mom community, Twitter might be your best bet.
The second issue is how to track the success of your ads. It is important to consider what your goals are from running the ads (do you want to build your following, drive traffic to your website, etc, and by how much?) and then put processes in place that allow you to do this effectively. If web traffic is your goal, Google Analytics allows you to track conversions from your Facebook ads (but that is a whole other blog post!). If you want to track sales, put processes in place to ask people who buy from you, or who inquire about your products or services, how they heard about you. What is important here is to set realistic goals and outline how you will track them, otherwise why bother?
Once you have determined which tools are best for your audience and how you will measure your success, the process of creating your ads is relatively simple. In the coming weeks we will be creating some how-to posts designed to help you do just that. In the meantime, if you are interested in advertising using social media but don’t have the time or wherewithal to do so, please contact us – this is what we do and we’d love to help!
Other posts about online advertising:
An Introduction to Internet Advertising
The Future of Digital Advertising – iAds and Promoted Tweets
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 11th, 2011
Every now and then we share with you our social media and internet marketing reasons to be cheerful – a compendium of links to gems we discover online that are interesting, useful or downright wacky. Here are our latest discoveries for your cyber enjoyment.
Diaspora is an interesting concept. Still in beta, it purports to allow you to “share what you want, with whom you want”; you choose exactly who you share your photos and what-not with, and you retain ownership of your stuff. You can sign up for an invite on their website.
If you are a Twitter fan, you should check out Trensdmap which gives you real time local Twitter trends so you can get the scoop on what is happening in your Twitterverse.
CoverItLive is another social media add-on tool. This one is aimed at bloggers – CoverItLive is a tool that allows you to broadcast live commentary to your followers.
Ghostery calls itself a “window into the invisible web” – tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons that are included on your web pages in order to get an idea of your online behavior. It tracks the trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity.
SocialBakers is an online tool providing social media statistics across countries, brands, articles, Twitter and so on. Very handy for internet marketing types.
Empire Avenue is another interesting website, this one lets you grow your social capital (whatever that means). It is actually a social game that lets you buy and sell shares of people online and websites.
And strictly for fun, if you are looking for some new ideas, why not swap some on The Idea Swap – keep swapping until you get an idea you like!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 05th, 2011
LinkedIn recently overtook MySpace as the second largest social network. With over 100m users worldwide, LinkedIn is not only one
of the most popular networks but also one of the oldest (launched in 2003), and it is by far the most used network in the business community.
These days, if you are a professional and you’re not on LinkedIn you risk being perceived as old fashioned, out of touch, or worse, lazy. If you have been procrastinating about using LinkedIn for business and are not sure where to start, this blog post is for you.
LinkedIn 101
LinkedIn is a social network that centers around your career and your connections. You post your resume, in as much or as little detail as you feel comfortable with, and start connecting with people you work with, or have worked with in the past. You also connect with people you went to school with, or people you know through your existing business connections.
Why use LinkedIn?
People use LinkedIn for a multitude of reasons. Your goals and usage will depend on your career, your ambitions, your role and, ultimately, your business goals.
If you don’t have any other social media presence, and you’ve avoided it like the plague, then LinkedIn is the place you should start. Given that, with the current economic times, no job is a job for life; building a LinkedIn presence can help you stay current – just in case. Not only that, LinkedIn can also save you a lot of time and effort in your current role. Those are just a couple of reasons why LinkedIn is a must for business people. Here are ten more reasons why every business person should be on LinkedIn:
1. LinkedIn for Research – LinkedIn’s questions and answers is great place to crowd source. If you are working on a project and need to do some research, why not consider asking the LinkedIn community. People are often keen to show their knowledge, and you will find that if you word your question correctly you will get valuable feedback, links and information that will save you time.
2. Looking for work? Find out if the person who is hiring, or prominent people from the company that you want to do business with, are in your extended network and ask for a connection from the person you have in common. It’s always easier to get an interview or a first meeting if you are referred by someone trusted. Also if you are on the job market, make sure that you post your resume to LinkedIn and update it as your experience grows. LinkedIn is often the first place recruiters look when considering hiring someone.
3. Share an Update – Use your status updates on LinkedIn wisely. You can use them to inform your networks of what you do, or what you are looking to do. For example, if you are conducting a strategy session with a client, tell your network that – many of them might not know that you provide this service. Or you can entrench yourself as an expert in your field by posting valuable links to articles or news pertinent to your field that will educate or add value for your connections.
4. Company Profiles – LinkedIn isn’t just for individuals, businesses can have profiles too, and yours should. Doing so will help build your organization’s web presence, will allow interested parties to learn more about your business, give you valuable referrals and will improve your web ranking. Make sure that employees know about your page and link to it, and that your services are prominently displayed.
5. Save Time and Maintain Relationships – In the old days people had a rolodex and had to lift a phone on a regular basis in order to keep in touch with their connections, and only managed to keep in touch with the main ones because it took so much time. These days you can use tools like LinkedIn to stay at the forefront of people’s minds (even those on the periphery of your network). I am not saying that you shouldn’t lift a phone – you should, but by using LinkedIn you can more easily keep in touch with more people and augment your relationships.
6. Build Your Network – Not only is it important to keep in touch with people but it is also important in business to connect with new people. When you do so, follow up with a LinkedIn connect request and take advantage of your in person networking in the virtual world too. Get in the habit of doing this and your LinkedIn network will quickly grow. Connect with people you meet, work with, people you connect with online and use this as a way to stay in touch with your connections as in point five above.
7. Reach the Powers that Be – LinkedIn is the social network used most by top level executives so it can be a really valuable tool in connecting you with decision makers. This is especially powerful for strategic selling.
9. Hiring – with over 100m potential candidates online, have you thought of using LinkedIn to facilitate in your hiring process? People use LinkedIn for recruitment and for finding jobs and, given the professional nature of the tool, it can help you find just the right person for the job. You can easily set this up – it costs about $195 for a 30 day job posting.
10. Advertise – LinkedIn recently started allowing members to advertise on its network in a highly targeted way. You can advertise to specific people by company, geography, title, gender and age. You only pay for click throughs (each time someone clicks on the ad) and the cost is quite affordable (minimum $10 per day), but one downside is that you are limited by characters in the text.
If LinkedIn is on your to-do list please remember that we provide LinkedIn set up, maintenance, education and coaching services. Contact us and let us know how we can assist.
Please connect with us on LinkedIn at Out-Smarts or with Mhairi.
Related articles:
http://www.out-smarts.com/2010/01/21/using-social-media-for-recruitment-part-1-linkedin/
http://www.out-smarts.com/2009/04/17/is-your-company-on-linkedin/
http://www.out-smarts.com/2008/10/27/the-out-smarts-podcast-11-linkedin-with-rob-duncan/
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, June 09th, 2011
Is social media one of the things on your to do list that never gets addressed because you don’t know where to start, or how to use it 
effectively? Perhaps you have embarked on a social media implementation that has fizzled out because you have other more pressing priorities and don’t have the time to manage it effectively. For many small to medium sized businesses, social media is a conundrum and the solution is invariably to bring in a social media expert to assist.
Hiring an expert in social media can be a great solution to these problems because it enables you to cut to the chase without having to worry about the steep learning curve social media can entail. It also increases the likelihood of your organisation achieving its social media goals more quickly, but only if you choose the right organisation or individual to work with. Beware, if your chosen partner in this area turns out to be inept, you could end up throwing money down the drain, or worse, damaging your online reputation.
Here are ten tips that will help you determine how to hire the right social media help.
- Do a little research up front. Google the person or company to see whether the results are related to social media.
- Find them on LinkedIn; check their referrals, experience and how long they have been doing social media related work. If they don’t have a LinkedIn presence then maybe they are simply social media power users, and not social media for business experts.
- Facebook and Twitter – check out their feeds – do they add value? Are they social media related? Avoid companies that have generic posts or worse, simply spout famous quotes. Also on Twitter, consider their follower counts, and remember that quality is always better than quantity when it comes to those.
- How long have they been doing social media? – social media is a relatively new principle but generally if someone has been doing this less than a year then they are still wet behind the ears. Best to work with an organisation that has been doing social media for upwards of 2 years (we’ve been doing it for 5!).
- Do they ask the right questions? I am often asked which questions to ask a social media expert from a hiring perspective (and I will get to those momentarily) but more importantly, you can determine whether a social media expert knows his or her stuff by the questions she asks you. If she asks how many followers you want but doesn’t ask about your target audience, or about your business, then that should be a red flag. Social media is not simply about being on Twitter or Facebook. It is about using these tools strategically to build your business given your audience, marketplace, goals and resources, and a good social media strategist will take these into account.
- Do they have a business background? Social media should be a component of your overall marketing and business strategy, and should complement your missions and goals. As such, a good social media expert should have a strong back ground in business systems whether it be through their education or experience. Working with someone with no business background that has many followers can be a mistake.
- A good question to ask a social media expert is how do they monitor and measure social media success. If they are flummoxed and don’t have a good answer then avoid them. If their answer includes mentions, interactions, web traffic analysis, community, insights and your goals then they are more likely to be on the right track.
- Ask them why you should use social media. If they answer that everyone is doing it then turn tail and run. However if they ask if your competitors, clients and prospects are online, and if you want to attract the next generation of customers, then move on to number 9.
- Social media professionals often get asked about the ROI of social media. Again, if an expert has no answer to this then they probably won’t be the right partner for you. It is much easier to track the ROI of a social media campaign than it is to track the effectiveness of some tradition marketing approaches such as billboard and newspaper ads. A good SM person will know this and will point out that your ROI will be dependent on what you want to achieve using these tools. They might give examples of projects they have worked on and how ROI was measured.
- Ask yourself if this is an individual or organisation that you can work closely with. When considering outsourcing your social media effort, it is extremely important that you chose a partner that you can work well with. Your social media will be a team effort and will likely involve lots of back and forth when maintaining your online presence, so work with someone you like and trust.
As with any partnership decision, often the best place to start when looking for a social media expert to work with is to ask people in your own business network who they work with, and whether they would recommend them. Unfortunately, there are a a lot of cowboys and snake oil salesmen claiming to be social media gurus right now, but if you follow the guidance outlined above you will be more likely to identify the right social media partner for you. Or you could just contact Out-Smarts, we do come highly recommended!
