Whether you are just launching a new business or you have been established for years, you may just now be delving into social media marketing.

Social media marketing should play an important role in your business marketing plan. With social media, you have the ability to hyper target your audience and reach the customers you want, where they are, when they are there.

You can also use social media as a form of two-way communication with your customers and prospects. You can learn from them, answer questions, interact and build a relationship with them; therefore, ultimately generating leads, sales and repeat customers.

However, maybe you don’t know anything about social media. Or, you just don’t have the time necessary to execute a great strategy.

That’s when you would look to hire a social media marketer. They can give you the time, resources and knowledge you need to build and implement a social strategy that is worth the effort and energy.

A social media manager will be speaking for your business online. They will be communicating to and with your customers and prospects, and should emulate your brand. Just because someone says they can do social media marketing doesn’t mean they can do it effectively and successfully.

When looking to hire someone, whether you are looking for a freelancer or a part- or full-time employee, here are 19 questions to ask yourself, and the potential manager, before bringing them on board.

1. What social media platforms are best for my business? Have them explain to you where your business should be and what your brand should represent on social. Each social channel has different marketing tactics, so through research they’ve done on your company and industry, they should be able to tell you where you should be.
   
2. In your opinion, what are the two most important social metrics I should monitor regularly? This question will give you insight into their track record with Facebook ads, metrics monitoring, analysis and optimization, and experience with content and engagement. Hint: a good answer would be engagement and leads.
   
3. Define, in your own words, social media marketing and social customer service. There are essentially two parts to a social media strategy: marketing and customer service.
   
   Marketing is what drives traffic and engagement. It shouldn’t revolve around sales, but should recognize how to attract a prospective customer, tell a brand story, and lead them into the marketing and sales funnel.
   
   Customer service is how to retain customers. You must have the ability to be empathetic, solve problems, offer resolutions and build relationships. Not only are they helping the customer they’re interacting with, they’re also responding to the entire Facebook audience of current or prospective customers. They should be able to answer questions, respond to feedback, and handle problems effortlessly.

4. What do you think the most important role of a social media manager is? There is no right or wrong answer to this question. Some answers, though, are better than others. Examples of good answers are:
   
   • Monitoring or listening to our current social audience.
   • Social listening to not only our current audience, but our prospects and others talking about the industry, as well as competitors.
   • Engaging regularly with fans by responding in a timely manner, talking to them, and thanking them.
   • Staying on top of industry and social trends, updates and new tools.
     
5. Have you ever had to deal with a social media crisis? Your business may be small enough, or non-controversial, that you likely will never have to deal with a real crisis. But a crisis for you could range from negative comments to an employee saying things they shouldn’t to a malfunctioning product to the BP oil spill. Your social media manager should be able to handle all of these crises, and anything in between.
   
   First, ask them to define what a social media crisis is to them. Then, ask them what steps they would take to resolve a crisis. Perhaps provide them an example of something that could happen to you or your business and ask to explain what they would do in that case.
   
   If they have experience handling a crisis, ask them what it was, what they did, and what the outcome was. Also ask them what they learned, and if they would do anything different in the future.
   
6. How do you deal with negative comments/engagement? This goes with #5. For some businesses, the most negative “publicity” you’ll have are negative comments or reviews. Ask them how they deal with that negativity, and what processes or protocols they would put in place for handling them.
   
7. How would you allocate our social media budget? These days, social media is pay to play. Due to Facebook’s changing algorithms, reaching high business page organic reach and engagement is nearly impossible.
   
   Especially if you have a small budget, having a plan for budget allocation is important. Ask them what their ideal monthly budget would be. Have them explain how they would allocate your budget and how they would measure success. Will they use it boosting posts? Developing paid campaigns? Promoting your website? Purchasing monitoring or publishing software?Then, how would they prove ROI?
   
8. If hired, what would your first social media goals be? With this answer, you’re not looking for particular numbers or percentages. Instead, you’re looking for something like how they will build an audience of customers, or how they will engage with your audience.
   
   While metrics and growing your audience and reach is important, it’s more important for them to focus on building an engaging and sustainable strategy. A small, highly engaged audience is much more powerful than a large, minimally-engaged audience.
   
9. Can you show or describe examples of pages or projects you’ve managed in the past? This is self-explanatory. You want to get a good idea of the types of industries they’ve worked with, what content they post, how they engaged, and what their success rates were. Understand their experience with different strategies.
   
10. What does a successful social media strategy look like to you? Answers to this question can vary, and success is defined differently business to business. In your mind, you should have an idea of what success for your social media looks like, in general. The purpose of this question is just to gauge how they measure success, set goals, ad execute strategy.
    
11. What are some of your favorite social media tools? You may not personally know any social media tools, and that’s ok. The purpose of this question is to learn what they have access to and what they use to do their job. Do they have sites they get images or videos from? Tools to create infographics? Scheduling, monitoring or listening tools?

12. Tell me an example of a social media failure you’ve either seen, or that has happened to you. What would you have done differently? It’s important that this person is monitoring the industry and learning from other companies who are successful, or not so much. They should be watching when companies fail or thrive, and understand what the company did and how it can be applied to other businesses and strategies.
    
13. How do you stay on top of the latest updates, innovations, trends and new platforms? Being a successful social media manager means staying on top of the latest updates, innovations and trends. You want to be where your customers are and engaging with them how they want to be spoken to.
    
    Facebook, Twitter and other platforms are constantly making changes to their algorithms, privacy and rules. It’s critical your manager knows and understands these and the impacts they would have on your page. It’s also important to know how to do the latest and greatest so you can stay relevant and not fall behind.
    
14. How would you ensure our social media strategy aligns with the rest of the company marketing strategy? This will help you learn how they collaborate and what their plans would be for ensuring your brand, marketing and messaging is consistent. Maybe they will use the same photos or videos, or perhaps use copy from your brochure to formulate posts. It could be as simple as linking back to your website.
    
    There are a variety of ways they can align the social media, but having a plan and understanding the importance of consistency is key.
    
15. Do you personally own a blog or post on social media? To be a good social media manager, they have to be active on social media themselves. The best way to understand the platforms is to be on them!
    
16. How will you build an audience of in-market fans? How will you engage the in-market audience? Engaging your audience is key. The primary purpose of businesses being on social media is opening a two-way communication street. Your customers and audience want the ability to talk to you, and you talk back.
    
    Understanding how your new marketer will build the audience of fans, as well as engage with them, should be a key piece of your social strategy. You want to make sure this is important to them, as well, and learning about some of their ideas can help you gauge if they are right for your business and audience.
    
17. Do you have any thoughts on our current social efforts? How would you improve it? If you’re interviewing someone, they should already have taken a look at your current social media efforts. As an interviewee, it’s important to be prepared to talk about the company you’re interviewing with. Doing their research ahead of time shows their interest and seriousness of working for you.
    
    They should also be able to give you one or two ideas, even generally, of how they would improve your page. If they say nothing, they either haven’t done their research or they aren’t a good fit.
    
18. How would you track and prove ROI? Measurement is another critical piece of your social strategy. Especially if you have a budget, your C-Suite will be interested to understand that the dollars are being spent effectively and helping the company.
    
    While proving ROI may depend on what your social and company goals are – generating leads or sales, increased traffic to the website, building brand reputation and awareness, etc. – the potential new manager should have an idea of what they should track and how they can prove success.
    
    Whether they have tracking tools, or just ideas for metrics to measure, the answer to this question can help you make sure measurement and tracking is something they think about and can do.
    
19. Do you have any experience with influencer or employee advocacy on social media? If you don’t have plans for influencer marketing or employee advocacy programs, you can skip this question.
    
    However, active, engaged and compliant employees on Facebook can drastically increase your page’s following and brand reputation. Alternatively, disengaged and non-compliant employees can hurt your brand. While you may not need to create an employee advocacy program, it could be helpful for the new manager to have experience with creating guidelines, training or education of colleagues.

Remember, there are no right or wrong questions or answers. The important thing is when you end the interview, you have a full understanding of the new manager’s capabilities, interests, ideas and experience. Gauge their excitement and passion for social media. It’s an ever changing world, and growing in importance when it comes to engaging with and understanding your customers. You want to hire someone who will bring you success!