In our last post, we talked about the five mistakes that many companies make when they hire people to manage and operate their social media programs. Today, we shift the focus to what should be front and centre when looking for the right people.
To start, companies need a strategic plan or roadmap about where they want to go with social media – even if their initial foray is relatively modest. This will provide insight into the person who should be hired first, as well as those who could be hired later.
For the first hire, the focus should be on someone who has a variety of skills, including, of course, experience with social media.
This person needs to have strong communication and writing skills, as well as a good grasp on marketing and business development. Having someone who can also provide strategic insight would be valuable.
This is important because a company’s initial efforts will play a major role in whether social media will succeed or fail. As a result, it makes no sense to hire someone who lacks enough experience or the right skills.
In other words, don’t hire a junior employee simply because they are inexpensive and enthusiastic about social media.
With a solid person in place to establish a social media program, companies can then look for social media evangelists and tacticians to help support day-to-day operations.
These are people who are going to be on the front lines, talking to people online or in person at conferences, meet-ups and other events.
Again, you want people with strong communication skill, and enough confidence and experience to know what they can handle, and when they need to circle back for support.
These positions can be high-pressure given the flow of information come at them so it is important to have people who can stay cool when things get hot.
If there is enough social media activity to justify the investment, it makes sense to hire people to monitor social media activity. While this is a tactical position, it requires people with enough knowledge and experience to recognize situations that require attention and action.
At the same time, these people also need to quickly determine whether specific social media activity should be routed to particular departments so they can take the appropriate action.
The hiring process depends on how a company wants to approach and embrace social media. Regardless of whether it’s a small operation or a significant part of the business, it is crucial to hire people with the right skills and experience.
This is particularly important for the first person hired because they can make or break your social media efforts.
Tags: hiring, HR, mistakes, Social Media
Great post! I think it’s vital to have a small team for the job. That way, each person can focus on a set of tasks and fulfill them, as opposed to having one person try to do everything and failing short.
Also, I think its great that the corporations are catching up and realizing that “having 1,500 facebook friends” does not count as experience; I think the subject should have as a minimum the ability to measure results and present them in the form of reports that management can understand.
Strong communication skills, confidence, and a cool temper for when things get heated up are definitely musts too.
Cheers from Cancun,
Camilo Olea
http://www.twitter.com/camiloolea
Thank you so much for your post. From my own personal experience as a marketing director who has implemented social media, the facts you have laid out to consider are vital to the success of rolling out a program that is what the customers want as well as one that management can support.
And I agree wholeheartedly with Camilo’s observation that just because you have 1,500 Facebook friends, Twitter follower or LinkedIn connections doesn’t automatically make you an expert. I’ve seen persons placed in that position to represent the company’s brand, only to have it fail.
The other point in my own personal experience is allowing the person who is hired to lead up the social networking plan for a company to have some freedom to explore what is best for the company, customers and those within the organization who will be using it. Just because a competitor is on MySpace doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Research on the Web takes many forms. What looks like someone goofing around online to one person is time to read blogs for another. You have to be able to trust the person you’ve hired that the time they spend on the Web is for the greater good. If you don’t trust them, you either hired the wrong person or you are not ready to be involved in social media online.
There are so many things to consider when rolling out a strategy, and that makes all the difference between success and failure in this uncharted territory we call social media.
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I would add that it is also important to look for a good analytical mind. Folks without this have a hard time analyzing data from monitoring tools. Or they can read it, but have no idea how to form a strategy out of it.
I usually ask potential hires what TV shows they watch. If they respond with shows that require problem-solving (Ex. crime dramas like CSI, NCIS or Criminal Minds, or medical shows like House) they probably have a natural analytical tendency. They tend to be good at pattern recognition in data, which is crucial to trend-spotting, etc.