SME

“I auto-follow 20,000 people on Twitter”. If you’re OK with it, kick them in the groin for me. If not, nod politely and move on.

“I follow interesting, relevant people on Twitter, comment on relevant blog posts and try to get into the conversation”. Home run. Try not to weep with joy.

“We need to figure out the campaign first”. Good answer. Give them a hypothetical campaign to be sure, but clearly you’re on the right track.

In a recent survey by Social Media Today 34 % of Facebook users admitted that they spend less time on the network. Despite Facebook’s declining popularity, the popularity of social media, especially those used on smart phones, will continue to rise as humans are social by nature. Relevancy and SOLOMO (social local mobile) will remain important in social media. In addition, there is likely to be an increase in the use of technologies such as augmented reality and products like Google’s Glass technology, which we have already started seeing.

Social media “experts” are quickly becoming a dime-a-dozen. There are thousands of self-proclaimed experts out there, but you need a professional who knows your business and cares about your success. Be sure that the person you engage as your company/brand representative knows what sets them apart from their competition.

Any professional worth their salt will do some preliminary research before sitting down with you. If the person you interview doesn’t know (at least at a high level) what your competitors are doing, it might be a cause for concern. IMHO, they should be able to give you insight on the way your competitors are using the major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Make sure to respond promptly. The longer you take, the bigger the blunder looks to the consumer. Make sure any apology you give is honest and sincere. Otherwise, followers were rip it apart even more. Respond on all channels as well even if the incident only occurred on one.

Social media employers often stress conversation, storytelling, and engagement. Give examples of how you have conversed with clients and consumers, created interesting stories, and increased measures of engagement such as clicks, likes, reach, etc. Any campaign you mention should have these three elements at the very least. Be sure to save dashboards and results from your campaigns so you can show them off later!

LinkedIn is one of the most important business-oriented platforms for social media. Knowing how the company can leverage existing LinkedIn profiles and groups to create a successful marketing campaign shows you possess the practical skills needed to handle a social media management position. (Extra Tip: Make sure that LinkedIn Profile Picture is up to snuff before the interview.)

“Huh?” Hopefully your next step is obvious.

“Google alerts”. Not bad, but wait and see if they add in stuff like subscribing to Twitter searches and the like.

“I use a 3rd party tool”. Fine, but make sure they do more than plug in some keywords and wait for e-mails. A human being needs to review what the tool reports or its worthless.

A successful community manager needs good judgement, strong communication skills, a 24/7 attitude (which is a feature of the social media lifestyle), the ability to manage multiple platforms and track feedback. This person needs to have an analytical mind and be capable of sharing information with superiors. The person should be adaptable, calm, and be able to solve problems. As a community manager, you have to eat, sleep and breathe the brand. You also require people skills, and have to be outgoing, friendly and relatable. Finally, you need to be comfortable interacting with people offline as well as online.

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube may be the juggernauts right now but remember the days of AOL, CompuServe, MySpace and eBay? Would you hire a social media professional who pitched engaging your customers on Prodigy? Probably not. My point is that social networks come and go, and your social media professional should be constantly evaluating new platforms and making recommendations on whether you should explore them.

Believe it or not, online social networking didn’t start with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Plenty of social media professionals have experience that goes back to online bulletin boards, forums on CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL, and online forums. Look for professionals who have been building online relationships for more than five years. Most social media professionals will be willing to share links to their profiles and it would be a good idea to look them over for professional activity. If your social media “expert” spends more time talking about their Friday parties and drops F-bombs frequently, think twice…

You should be fine on this one as long as you have something to say. Employees are not likely to judge your decisions. Look at our article on 5 Social Media Experts You Should be Following if you’re drawing a blank and want suggestions! You can also check out another article that gives Facebook-specific advice.

When you answer this question, spend the most time talking about the platform you’re most skilled with and explain why this is the case. However, you should mention all the major platforms and details their strengths. Talk about how Twitter is best for conversations, Facebook is great for advertising, LinkedIn is best for recruiting and sharing career-related articles, and how Google+ is an underrated tool that is actually valuable for creating a social media community.

There are some universal answers to this question, including engaging with fans and responding promptly to comments and messages. Beyond these, many of the platforms differ in the ideal cadence and content of posts. Analyze the potential employer's social media activities and prepare to discuss best practices for every network it uses.

“Voting something to the front page of Digg using my proxy server and 35 computers”. Flee the scene, and get to a minimum safe distance as soon as possible. The Digg brigade may be on its way. Whatever you do, don’t hire them. While this is a valid tactic (I guess), it’s not a campaign. Nor does it generate long term results in most cases.

“Developing a great message and then reaching out to people, while giving them an incentive to ‘pass it on'”. Yeah, OK, keep ’em around.

“I have this great software that will put a link to your site on 21,000 forums and 10,000 blogs…”. Push them down the garbage chute. Don’t be seen with them in public.

This one forces them to explain what they perceive to be your business goals. Are you selling product or services? Are you attracting members to your professional organization? Your social networking approach should be tailored to your business goals and your activities should be measurable. They might not be hard metrics in terms of sales or conversions, but there should be some measurement involved, even if its the increasing the number of positive online interactions and reducing the amount of negative chatter around your brand.

You could just answer this by saying that you used a different platform to cover the shortcomings of the other. This isn’t a bad answer. In fact, it can be part of a good answer. However, you should definitely know how to overcome or at least deal with limitations on social media platforms. For example, Facebook has severe limitations when it comes to organic (non-paid) reach. One way to overcome this without paying on Facebook is to use email marketing and subscription-based methods to gently guide people to the page with links and suggestions (a strategy recommended by Facebook Marketing Expert Mari Smith).4 If you have your own awesome anecdote already, that’s even better!

☛ What is your strategy for social media and content?

☛ What sites do you think the company should be on that we are not?

☛ How would you design an optimal social media experience for our customers/users?

☛ How do you use and leverage the benefits of both LinkedIn Groups and LinkedIn Pages?

☛ How do you measure the success of a social media strategy?