1. Tell me is social media free?
Yes, the services are free to use. However, no matter how much automation you put on them (if you choose to), there is an investment in human time. Unless your time is free. 🙂
2. Tell me what things public relation specialist should know?
☛ Public relations specialist must be aware of the newspaper or websites that enable you to reach your target demographic most effectively
☛ And public relations specialist should have experience with both old and new media
3. Tell me what Bit.ly tracks for public relation press release?
Bit.ly shortens your website long URL into a short link, and that link can be used for social media. Also, it can be used to track
☛ Number or clicks
☛ Clicks frequency and its time
☛ Track referral websites
☛ Track regional clicks
4. Explain what is the advantage of in-house PR specialist?
The in-house PR will act as a representative of your product to the outside world, and being an in-house PR, he can give a total dedication for branding of your product.
5. Explain how much would it cost me for you to setup my social media accounts?
This should be included in part of the consulting fee if you don't have an account setup yet. The key here is NOBODY should be charging a relative arm and leg to setup an account. A well designed Twitter background? Sure, that costs a bit. However, the response here I would hope would be that setup is included, but real expertise comes from knowing how to OPTIMIZE accounts and avoiding little common mistakes.
6. Explain me some examples of how we could generate PR using social media?
If the words that sound anything like “traditional press release” rears its head here, run away. Online relationships (with bloggers, media sources, etc.) are a different breed all together and based around genuine caring, relationships AND business.
7. Tell us what online communities have you managed in the past?
Creating profiles and pages and then posting content to them isn't the job – anyone can do that. The ability to build and engage with the community is the qualifying test of whether someone is a social media manager or a social media user.
8. What are your thoughts on Google+?
There are several schools of thought on this matter, and there is no right answer. As of this writing, G+ should be used mostly for SEO purposes and local search results if nothing else. It's a strange and fine line to consider this platform as a pure social network - it doesn't seem to hold much weight. But the additional effects of using it are still powerful.
9. Tell me what all sectors can a public relations specialist can work?
Public relation specialist can give service in various sectors like
☛ Advertising or PR firms
☛ Work directly with clients
☛ Press secretary
☛ Information officer
☛ Media specialist
☛ Government agencies
☛ Non-profit organization
10. Explain some of the social media optimization or monitoring tools?
These tools make business posting and monitoring across different platforms easy
☛ Hootsuite
☛ TweetDeck
☛ CoTweet
☛ Vitrue
☛ Posterous
☛ Postling
11. Explain me what is your background other than social media?
If they are helping you with marketing, I would hope they have a background in marketing/promotion of some shape or form.
12. Tell me how do you measure ROI?
If you don't keep score, how do you know where you stand? There are lots of soft analytics you can use: Sentiment (how do people feel about the brand), amount of followers, retweets, Facebook comments, blog traffic, website traffic, etc. However, remember the hard analytics are what ultimately matters on the finance sheet: Amount of new (for example) email subscribers from social which led to sales, total sales BEFORE social media vs. % increase after using it (remember no magic pill here so allow a few months before you have measurable results).
If their answer is to get as many likes and shares as possible, it's time to politely end the interview. The path from likes to conversions is more like A to K than A to B, so they should be able to explain what that path looks like for different platforms. Ultimately, conversions are always the goal. They should also be able to help you define success on a strategic and tactical level in order to support your larger marketing goals.
14. Tell me what is the role of public relations specialist?
Public relations specialist maintains a favorable image of an organization or a person he is representing by creating press note or releasing documents to media personnel about their client or organization.
15. Explain some of the challenges that Public Relation specialist are facing?
☛ PR for mobile users: Mobiles have pushed PR specialist to think out of the box and prepare messages that are small and yet effective
☛ From local to global: To understand the market value and client's product demand, PR has to increase their field spectrum from local to global. Studies have to be carried out to know about the geographical and cultural differences before recognizing the target audience
☛ Continuous Monitoring of product in real time: Continuous monitoring of client's product through PR helps to add value to it. Also, it helps the client to fade away any negative branding done by the rivals about the product.
☛ Image driven Content: Image driven content are more in demand than normal content. Image that conveys the product message with minimum description
☛ Hyper personalized content: Client's demand of representing them with a personalized symbol or style statement through a right channel and at the right time. For instance, coke's personalized bottles or Microsoft logo
☛ Social Media and SEO: PR specialist should be aware of all technical glitch of the social media optimization and how SEO works
16. Tell me do you guarantee followers?
Run away if they quantify this. Sure, with many principles applied followers are going to come. Guaranteeing them seems a bit sketchy.
17. Fresh Social Media Interview Questions To Ask Candidates?
☛ What is the purpose of social media?
☛ What tools/sites are you most comfortable with?
☛ Name two social media sites/softwares/tools that have no business value.
☛ Tell me about a campaign you executed from start to finish.
☛ How do you measure success in social media? How would you justify it a) internally, or b) to a client?
☛ How does social media affect SEO and your online profile?
☛ Define the value in targeted traffic versus the value of large numbers of traffic. Give me examples of how to 1) generate both and 2) when to generate each kind of traffic.
☛ What is your policy on moderating comments? Define transparency.
☛ Is it acceptable to pay bloggers or social media types to post information? Why or Why Not?
☛ It's important that a company fully engage in social media to be successful. Evangelize me, assuming that I know very little about social media, and might even be a little bit hostile to it. Convince me that I personally should use social media in 2 minutes or less.
18. Tell me how long ago did you start using social media and why?
Hopefully they were an early adapter and understood the importance early on or caught on quickly.
19. Basic Social Media Interview Questions:
☛ What is Web 2.0?
☛ What does Web 3.0 look like?
☛ What's the “next big thing?”
☛ What is the difference between social media and social networking?
☛ What do you think of social media consultants?
☛ What's the scariest part of social media?
☛ What's the most exciting part of social media?
☛ What social media blogs do you read? What research do you follow?
☛ Who's your favorite social media expert?
20. Twitter Based Social Media Interview Questions:
Twitter is the perfect way to share information about your company quickly. A great social recruiter knows how to work the hashtag, utilize the character limit, and write a great tweet. Ask your candidate all about their Twitter experiences- you just might learn something new.
☛ Do they know how many characters are in a tweet and why?
☛ Do they understand the value of hashtags? Ask them what they are for and how they use them to draw traffic?
☛ Can they give you an example of a Twitter campaign they ran?
☛ How often should a company tweet out recruitment engagement posts?
☛ What do they think about job distribution on Twitter?
☛ Do they understand the value of having two Twitter accounts (one targeted for content and one for job distribution and SEO)?
☛ Do they understand what's trending, and how and when to wrap into it? Ask for an example.
☛ How are they measuring success-qualitatively, quantitatively, both?
21. LinkedIn Based Social Media Interview Questions:
As the largest professional social network, LinkedIn should be one of the most familiar platforms to your candidate. Your new social recruiter should know the best (and cheapest) ways to connect with LinkedIn members. Posting on LinkedIn can be tricky so ask your interviewee these questions to find out if they know their stuff.
☛ Do they know what is free and what costs money?
☛ Do they have experience writing copy for the free promoted posts on LinkedIn?
☛ How do they decide when and when not to use a paid media campaign?
☛ What do they think about hashtags on LinkedIn?
☛ What do they think about volume of content on LinkedIn?
☛ How have they engaged with employees in a LinkedIn campaign?
☛ Have they ever trained staff or other recruiters on how to effectively use LinkedIn for branding, advertising, and/or sourcing?
☛ How do they know whether LinkedIn is successful in hiring?
22. Instagram Based Social Media Interview Questions:
Instagram is the newest social media site, and early-adopting companies have only started to take advantage of the platform's active user base. Your new recruiter should know what, how, and when to post awesome images to promote your employer brand. Ask these questions to test your job candidates ‘Insta' knowledge.
☛ Do they know about Instagram updates and which images get the most views/traffic? How would one acquire these images?
☛ Do they understand the value and necessity of hashtags on Instagram?
☛ Have they used and promoted a company hashtag? Did employees regularly use it?
☛ What creative ways have they used Instagram to attract and/or engage talent?
23. Facebook Based Social Media Interview Questions:
Sure, almost everyone and (quite literally) everyone's mom is on Facebook now. Although we may all know how to share a selfie or a photo of our soon-to-be-devoured dinner, that doesn't mean everyone is blessed with the coveted knowledge of how to leverage Facebook for recruiting advantage. Ask these questions to ensure your interviewee holds that knowledge.
☛ Ask for a portfolio that shows their most recent successful content (if they have not created company content, accept personal content.)
☛ How do they organize their content (have they used a content calendar)?
☛ What is their philosophy for content distribution on Facebook?
☛ Do they know the difference between likes, reach, and engagement?
☛ Can they give you an example of a creative recruiting campaign they have run on Facebook?
☛ How do they measure success?
24. Analytics & Marketing Based Social Media Interview Questions:
☛ How do you measure success on social media?
☛ What metrics do you use to measure the effectiveness of social media?
☛ How would you tell that a social media campaign has failed?
☛ What key performance indicators would you recommend to report on social media efforts?
☛ Write down a table of contents for a social media strategy.
☛ What elements should go into a social media marketing plan?
☛ Why would we want to pay for social media advertising?
☛ What are the best types of things to advertise on a social networking site?
☛ What analytics software packages have you used?
☛ Describe the most successful social media campaign you have ever seen. What made it so successful? Could you duplicate that level of success?
☛ Describe a social media campaign you ran from start to finish.
☛ Provide an example of a social media campaign you are current running. Show me what channels it is in. Describe the next steps for your campaign.
☛ What are the elements that make a video go viral?
25. Technical Social Media Interview Questions:
☛ Explain the difference between Facebook Like and Sharing on Facebook.
☛ If you're planning a vacation and will be out of touch and not able to get online for a week, what tools would you use to ensure social media updates are being posted?
☛ Write three headlines for news stories that you think will have tremendous success on social media. What makes the headline successful? Write a headline for a successful article about our company.
☛ How often should we update Twitter?
☛ How do you handle criticism of a company online?
☛ What would you do if someone started a parody account poking fun at our company?
☛ What is your policy for moderating comments?
☛ Would you pay a blogger to write favorably about our company?
☛ How would you show unique content only to fans on our Facebook page?
☛ Who in our organization should be blogging on behalf of the company?
☛ What is a “sneezer”?
☛ How would you perform competitive analysis in the social space?
☛ What do think about software applications that autofollow or try to get get large masses of friends on social network sites?
☛ What do the statistics look like for a healthy Facebook fan page?
☛ Explain what a retweet is.
☛ What is RSS? Why is it important?
☛ Have you ever gotten a piece of content onto the front page of Digg?
☛ How frequently do you update Facebook and Twitter?
