1. What social media tools do you use?
Here you will need to drop some names. It's important you know how to use one or more Social Media Management platforms such as HootSuite, SproutSocial or TweetDeck. Be prepared to explain why you use them and what features you like from one or the other.
2. Explain what are some of the best practices on Twitter?
Always use hashtags and mentions! Doing this will mean more people see your tweets and retweet. Some of these people might have big followings or clout that will benefit your company. Twitter is a great tool for conversing with customers so make sure to reply to their tweets as much as you can. Use hashtags to connect the conversation with other conversations in related topics.
3. How can social media help create value for SEO?
SEO skills are important to have when you are working with social media. Talk about your SEO strategies, the tools you use and the way you measure and analyze the results.
Google Analytics is a must here. Also, provide examples and be prepared to be tested by the recruiter.
4. Tell me what are your favorite social media blogs?
This is another question where there is no right answer. Be prepared to explain why you picked your sites though. If you don't follow any blogs, try browsing a few so you'll at least be prepared for this question.
5. Do you know what is Facebook EdgeRank? Why does it matters?
Facebook EdgeRank is an algorithm that Facebook uses to determine what articles should be displayed in a user's News Feed. Facebook Edge mark matters because
☛ About 96% of fans don't return to Brand's Facebook Page after initial engagement
☛ Your post is more likely to reach your fans in the newsfeed than your page
☛ About 27% of all time spent on Facebook is spent looking at news feed
6. Ask them what their first goals would be?
If your candidate starts talking about attracting ‘X' number of Facebook likes or ‘Y' number of Twitter followers, stop them and ask:
How will they build an audience of in-market fans?
How do they plan to engage with that specific audience?
They might try to blind you with numbers but a small, switched-on and engaged audience offers you much more value than a bunch of fans/followers from outside your market area.
7. Tell me which social media experts and/or influencers do you follow?
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.
8. Ask them to tell you a story?
I've saved the coolest, most enjoyable question for last. If your candidate has the ability to tell a compelling story, that will give you a huge advantage in all levels of social media and content marketing.
We all connect via stories. Stories paint pictures in customers' minds and evoke emotions that foster trust and credibility. Your candidate must be able to illustrate, through stories, why people buy from you rather than your competitor.
9. Explain me which social media brand strategy has inspired you lately and why?
Talk about why the strategy inspired you but, more importantly, also detail how you would love to create an original strategy of the same caliber. Explain how you would do this and implement it in the context of the job you're interviewing for.
10. Which social media channels do you recommend for our business?
Make sure you study the business you're interviewing with, think about their target audience, industry they work in and possible strategies they could follow and then compare it to what each social network offers. You'll have no problem to tackle this question and other similar ones if you have done your homework and informed yourself about the business/brand beforehand.
11. What are relevant metrics for tracking social media success?
Engagement, brand reach and lead generation is what helps show the ROI of social media to a business, these measurements show the results of your job. Show the interviewer that you are an expert analyzing the metrics and have solutions to improve them.
12. Tell me who speaks for your company on social media?
Hiring a social media manager can be quite a challenge. Social media reaches people, fosters conversations and your social media manager must develop a funnel for leads and sales from those relationships.
Social media is an integral part of online marketing strategy, which also includes content marketing and SEO.
A lot of people are trying to capitalize on this booming market so here's a shocker:
Not everyone who says they can do social media marketing have actually done it successfully!
When you're ready to hire (or promote) your social media manager, take advantage of these 10 questions to ask your candidate. Their answers will inform your decision and help you pick the right person.
13. Tell me the tips to promote your blog or content on social media sites?
You can promote your blog or content on the social media site using Co-Schedule.
☛ Social Sharing Schedule can double your traffic
☛ Use different title for same blog and schedule the blog post
☛ Schedule posting differs for different social sites, for example, you cannot promote same post to Facebook twice in one day than is on Twitter
☛ It allows you to create social messages at the time of post creation
☛ Plan out your blog post promotion with simple strategy with a simple Timeline
14. Please explain me how do you measure social return on investment (ROI)?
To measure the ROI that you invested in social media, you can consider using tools like the Conversation Measurement Tool on Facebook and optimized CPM. You can also use Google Analytics or LinkedIn, which have their own analytics. The criteria remain same to track the traffic like clicks, shares, purchases, number of likes, etc. ROI metric may also include
☛ e-mail subscription
☛ Website blog traffic
☛ Webinar registration
☛ Registration for content downloads,etc.
15. How do you use social media as a tool for customer service?
Social media is a great tool for customer service since you can converse with customers directly, use analytics to see how they're responding to content, and find influencers to chat with and bring over to your network. Some of these influencers might even be customers. Most social media employers stress the power conversation so have examples of how you've reached out to customers. Social media is also a good indicator of overall company vitality and analytics.
16. Do you have an editorial calendar? How do you schedule posts/tweets?
Find out how they organize their content in social media. This is a good indicator of how they plan ahead.
17. How would they allocate your budget for social media advertising?
Ask them to describe a plan for how best to allocate your budget and how they would know if it's successful.
A typical budget consideration is for Facebook ads. Depending on your company and your market, a minimum $500/month is a good start.
Investment in social media and content marketing is prerequisite for success. There are 6 main ways you're going to invest if you want to see ROI (return on investment):
☛ Financial
☛ Time
☛ Manpower
☛ Attention
☛ Monitoring, publishing and reporting software
☛ Training
18. Tell me how would you assess the social media presence of a company?
To assess the social media presence of a company following parameters can be used
☛ Whether company is registered with all the social media sites Pinterest, Facebook, LinkeIn, etc
☛ Frequency of content publication on social sites
☛ Type of content- imagery based/text etc.
☛ Level of audience engagement posts enjoy
☛ Is the description in social media aligned with the company's goals
☛ Is the company's information on social sites are updated and current
☛ Does your social media profiles include relevant links to your website, blog and other social media presence
☛ Does Company follows the right metrics to get more attention from social sites,
☛ Company's employees from all other division or franchises have created their own profile on social networks
☛ Is company's brand consistent on each network like- same logo, company description, etc.
☛ Whether a presence on social sites are used only for pushing out messages or used as a platform to create conversation
19. some tricks that can drive more traffic to your blog posts?
Few tricks that can drive more traffic to your blog posts are
☛ Promote your content or BlogPost across a wider variety of Platforms like
☛ com
☛ Tumblr
☛ com
☛ Create a 6-second preview of your post with app(iPhone) like Vine and post it on tweeter with a link to the blog post
☛ Give a short presentation of content or blog on Slide-Share and provide link to the content or to any relevant content
☛ Pin your post to Pinterest contributors board by choosing attractive image, title of your blog post, adding keywords and hashtags
☛ Use Instagram to share the image or title of your blog post. Share your blog post images to Tumblr, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and Foursquare
20. Explain which social media platforms are you best at using and why?
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.
21. How do you stay updated with the latest social trends?
If you are a social networking enthusiast, you surely follow some blogs and influencers. Let the recruiter know you are always up to date and share your favorites!
22. What do you think should be the goals of our Facebook/Google+/Twitter account?
As with the previous question, this answer depends on each company and on the specific needs they have. Again, you should investigate what they have done in the past on their social networks and also what they could improve. Hint: Make sure to share reachable and measurable goals.
23. Do they have a blog and do they currently write content for social media channels?
Ask to see their blog in action and make a note to see if they're posting regularly.
Pro Tip: ask to see links to content they've written on the web. Many times, candidates will produce content for places like LinkedIn Pulse and Medium, without having their own personal blog.
It's crucial that your candidate has a working understanding of how content drives everything in digital marketing – SEO, content, and social media.
24. Tell me the tips to improve my Facebook EdgeRank?
To improve your Facebook EdgeRank you have to follow the following tips
☛ Keep it short -> Posts between 100-250 characters are more likely to get more likes, comments and shares
☛ Be Visual -> Use Photos and Videos it can attract more users
☛ Ask for what you want -> Always ask for opinion or questions related to your content and how to improve it
☛ Post Daily -> 96% of your Fans aren't coming back to your page, so frequently posting is the only way to consistently reaching them
☛ Be Relevant and Not Pushy -> Post related to your service and product, but it should not address directly to your service or product
☛ Be Timely -> Find the best times for your audience and then stick with them
25. Explain me what set of skills required to become a Social Media Manager?
To become a Social Media Manager, you should have a
☛ Native understanding of each social media network
☛ Ability to connect corporate objectives to messaging, content and campaigns
☛ Ability to write concisely
☛ Ability to sympathize, engage and effectively communicate with a diverse range of people and opinions
☛ Provide customer service and handle complaints
☛ Deep understanding of the products or services the company renders
☛ To intuitively know how your audience experience the brand, communicate online and how to leverage those opportunities
26. Please explain what are the benefits of a LinkedIn group vs. LinkedIn page?
Groups tend to have a better reach and are therefore a more worthy place for sharing content. They also offer an excellent space for engaging with customers and other businesses, stresing keywords, and increasing interest in your company. A LinkedIn Page is where people go when they are already interested in the company. Thus, it should be informative above all else. Pages also function as a feed for putting out content and have at least a bit of SEO value.
27. Explain me what online communities have you managed in the past?
Here, you can mention how big the accounts you managed were, the number of followers, the strategy you followed, etc. Not enough big brand experience? No problem, you may also talk about your personal social networks but make sure they are “job seeking friendly”.
28. How would you deal with negative comments or a brand reputation crisis?
Show the hiring manager that you are able to react quickly and face a crisis with self-confidence and efficiency. You may use examples of famous brand reputation crises to tell what you think was done well and what not.
(There are many examples to analyze!!)
29. Explain me what's the most important thing a social media manager should be doing?
A solid answer would be monitoring and/or listening to the audience within the brand's Social channels. Engaging regularly with fans and followers is evidence that you're there – you care – and you're interested in having them as a customer.
When you listen, you learn how to help them buy.
30. Tell me how would you deal with a negative comments or a social media crisis?
To deal with a negative or heated comments over social media sites you can use following steps
☛ Respond Quickly: The first 24 hours for any post on the social media site is crucial for any negative comments made. Justify your brand or content if it is legitimate or else apologize if you are wrong. Don't use an approach of tit for tat
☛ Create crisis FAQs: Create a web page and put all the information about the crisis in one place so that it can help you to respond the crisis when it really occurs the FAQs should include
☛ Acknowledgment of crisis
☛ Details about the occurrence
☛ If available, photos or videos
☛ How company found out
☛ Specific action takes in response,
☛ Document every facet: Once you hit by the social media crisis record each bit of it like tweets, blog comments, status updates,
☛ Never send third reply: A third reply is an argument and not a justification, on third reply you take it offline
☛ Seek help from experienced community manager: Community manager is aware of the in and out of the product and knows well how to handle disgruntled customers
31. Explain some tools that Social Media Manager wants to consider?
The tools that Social Media Manager would consider would be
☛ Zendesk: Collecting messages from e-mail voice, customer engagement platform, social into one collaborative inbox
☛ HootSuite: Team management, social media dashboard, reporting, and search/monitoring
☛ Sproutsocial: Manage multiple brands, pages, searches. Assign tasks to team members, reporting, competitor research and post analytics
☛ Radian 6: Enterprise social media management application for campaigns, listening, research and post analytics
☛ TweetDeck: Just like HootSuite, TweetDeck helps you to manage multiple social media accounts- such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and LinkedIn
☛ Crowdbooster: It measures users engagement overtime and across multiple social media networks. It also suggests what kind of content are best for the business
☛ WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin: An editorial calendar plugin will give you a bird's eye view of your entire content publishing plan like publishing schedule, editorial task, blog post key topic, and ideas,
32. Tell me how active are you on social media and how many people are you connected with?
You don't need to have as many followers as Justin Bieber or be like Gary Vaynerchuck to impress your employers. However, your following or at least your activity on social media channels should reflect your passion for it and act as a sample of your overall communication skills.
33. Explain what social media campaigns have you produced and/or managed?
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!
34. Tell me what is your opinion on Google+? How should it be used in social media strategy?
Don't dismiss Google+ even if it isn't your favorite part of social media strategy. Even if the people interviewing you don't perceive it as being valuable compared to Facebook and Twitter, they don't want to work with someone who wouldn't be open to integrating it into an overall strategy. Explain how Google+ is a great resource for community building since it is a heavily curated and moderated community. Having a thriving community means people are talking more about your company and sharing more content. It also increases SEO which you already know is a supplementary part of social media marketing.
☛ Engagement. Whatever the channel, there needs to be measurable conversation around your company brand. Content is what drives social marketing success so if your content stinks, you won't see people engaging. Your candidate should be well-versed in writing and curating relevant content for your audience.
☛ Leads. Have they run a social campaign that generated leads? What's their track record with Facebook ads? Organic (non-paid-for) leads from social media look very different than the ones you see from advertising. Listening and responding timely to social media leads is crucial. Just like in real life conversations, when people talk to you, they expect a response.
