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11.17.08 Qualities Of A Social Media Manager  By Dan Morrill The relationship economy posted a great article pointing out that in the last three years social media jobs have grown some 325%. The problem though is how you make sure you are hiring the right people for the job. Since we are looking to adopt and manage social media at work, we will need a social media manager at some point in the future and this is exactly what I will be looking for. 1. Must know how to use MySpace, Facebook, Linkedin, Blogging, Twitter, YouTube, Slide share and Podcasting, the candidate should provide examples and links to live content for each example when applying for the job. Here is why I want those, I want to see how many friends they have, I want to see how many followers they have, and I want to be able to do a Google search LINK:DOMAIN-NAME.COM. I want to know exactly how embedded they are in the internet already, and I want to know how well they use the tools. If they have a lot of followers already, if they blog and guest blog on good high visibility sites, if they have a YouTube or other video channel they use on a regular basis, and if they podcast on a regular basis I know they know how to use the tools, I also get an idea of the quality of work. Is this the kind of quality that I want for my social media manager? It is not enough to pump out tons of content, but I also want to know how popular the person is already. Good quality content that is engaging, debate starting, insightful, and interesting, the candidate already is on their way to job employment. 2. The Candidate must be able to engage with difficult and unhappy people, while remaining respectful of all parties in the process. This is where Facebook, Linkedin, and MySpace come into play, if they are ragging on people, companies, or otherwise being degrading in tough social situations, I'll know about it here. Don't bother removing anything, Google has a cache of everything, eventually I will find out. I'll also have access to everyone in your contact list; expect me to hit them up on Linked In. If I friend you, and you don't respond for a week, you didn't get the job.
3. I am going to ask some very tough questions on the interview, I am going to find the most degrading damaging things that have been said on the internet, and I am going to scenario the whole thing with you. I'll find things like the 22 confessions of a dell manager, I'll find things like Kathy Sierra, or even just general hate rant, or I'll pull stuff from Valleywag (now a column), and I will work out how you would handle a politically and personally tough assignment. Expect this process to last hours. Here is why I am going to go through cases, and make a process of it. One I want to find out how well you react to people calling you bad names, but even better, I want to grind you down and make you tired, the last three of these cases are going to be the most important, because I'll know how you will react if you get tired, cranky, and have spent the better part of a day dealing with a person trying to trip you up. If you pass this, you can be my social media manager. At the end of the day is when we make our biggest and most damaging mistakes, we are tired, and just want to go home. If you are unfailingly polite through all this, that is a good thing. 4. Throw a barrage of information at the person and have them prioritize it, see how they organize and think. The reason for doing this, and it would probably be tied to number 3 as a scenario is to work out what is important first, and what can slide. I want the person to be able to pick out the top rated blogs, links, people and respond directly to them first, and then work their way down the list in order of importance, not leaving anyone off the list. Order of importance is tied to internet fame, if Robert Scoble, RWW, Mashible, Techcrunch, or Louis Gray says that something I did sucked, then many people are going to know about it. I'll want to engage with them first, and work out what the issues are on their site, with them, and then accept the bad news or work out a compromise. I want to make sure my Community Manager can do the same thing. 5. Given a list of sites, prioritize in order of internet importance. The reason for doing this is to see if they really understand the industry that I am hiring them for. If it is education, they had better be putting the Chronicle of Higher Education at the top of the list. If they are in Technology, they had better be putting RWW, Techcrunch, Robert, Louis, and everyone else at the top of the list. It is not about where these people end up on the list, it is how well they understand the industry, who the movers and shakers are, and where they are. They should recognize the URL's, or start asking questions, or getting on the internet to determine who they are and how important they are. You can play around with these, but hiring your social manager should not be easy, and you can take these ideas and expand on them. They are generic enough that people can go out and have a good time with them, working out exactly how they fit within the companies needs. Honestly though, this is what I will be hiring against when it comes down to finding the community manager. Really good, socially aware and responsible people will not necessarily fly through this process, but I will be able to weed out those that don't really know about the tools, how they work, and how they can be used. Comments About the Author: Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management. Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through his blog, Managing Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the ITtoolbox blogging community. |
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