Nick Garner's Blog

Happy social media employee!

Yes, I know there is a massive recession underway – so who on earth is hiring !?, but randomly I’ve been peripherally involved in helping a friend hire a new staffer to handle a social media role.

The main idea is to become a part of a community and from within, promote certain services. A problem is how to filter applicants, so you get it right 1st time. My experience is that its not qualifications, it’s time spent online, the innate nature of the person and their ability to ‘socialise’ very well online in a structured way.

Also for marketing,? since social media is about influence not buzz, its critical to find candidates who are natural influencers.

So I wrote this email to help out:

Questions you should ask

- Have you got a blog? or do you guest blog or write on any site? yes? whats the URL?
This shows that they like to give their opinions and share them online. It also shows they have some initiative, since it takes effort to set? up and run a blog. the popularity of their work obviously shows they can make themselves prominent online and that they like being at the centre of attention.

- Have you ever done any affiliate marketing i.e. got your own affiliate site?
If you don’t know what affiliate is see here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing.
Its not that likely they have done any, but if they have thats great. it shows genuine initiative and commercial awareness, which is important since ultimately they are an extension of your sales function. Its not terribly important whether its been a big success, just that they learnt from this and can apply their knowledge to the business.

- Do you understand SEO?
Trick question, since very few people do…and its a great opportunity for people to dig themselves into a hole.
If they do understand the principles, it will help your online marketing by another 30% or more.
People who do know it will talk about sites they have done and search rankings they have achieved. The more commercial and commonly used the phrase and the higher ranking the better.? So ‘car insurance’ is better than ‘under 18 car insurance kent’.
For a 101 guide to seo see here: http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-1-page

- Do you hang out on forums? which ones? and how long have you been there? and how many posts have you done on these forums?
More is more…so more time spent, more forums and more posts? is all good. This shows the person can embed themselves within communities and become trusted. Building trust is core to all this social stuff.

- How many friends do you have on facebook? what groups are you a member of?
On facebook over 120 friends is good – 600 is very good and above is really working the system. This just show how much of an online socializer the person is. Lots of friends means they can build contacts easily.

- How many connections do you have on linkedin?
Same as facebook.

- Do you use twitter?
If they have over 600 followers then good, but great if the person has fewer following than followers. i.e. more follow this persons updates, then he or she follows. If they bang on about how awesome twitter is, then bad, since there is not a great deal of utility for marketing in twitter (yes it’s true!).

- What other social networking communities are you a member of?
In SEO there is sphinn which I do some stuff with. Do they hang out on any specialised communities and if they do, how prominent are they? more is more here.

- What is your ‘handle’
People usually have a handle like anddroid or whatever when hanging out on the forums. Type it into google and see how many times the handle comes up. If 1000′s of times then good.

Related posts:

1. My social media rules
2. SEO is dying – thats why I’m going social
3. SEO and human social networks
4. Me at Measurement Camp – London, UK
5. Online PR – How I see it