Expert How to choose a competent SMM specialist and not to drain money on someone who just beautifully makes posts?

Promotion in social networks is now an absolute masthave for any business from retail to B2B. And it is very important to find a specialist who will not only make content for the sake of content, but also influence business metrics with SMM. In the article, I will tell you how to competently hire SMM specialists, what skills to pay attention to first of all and what questions will help determine whether a specialist will influence profits.

What is SMM for?

SMM (Social Media Marketing) is social media marketing. There are several goals of this marketing activity, but the main ones are to attract new customers, increase awareness and increase brand trust. Each piece of content should be published to achieve one of these goals.

The main directions of SMM

1. Developing a strategy This is a document in which we prescribe goals, data from competitor analysis and a description of the target audience. The document may also include a rubricator, funnels, information on advertising tools and more.
2. Content creation – writing posts, designing creatives, shooting photos and videos, writing scripts and editing videos.
3. Interaction with the audience This is communication with subscribers, answers to their questions, conducting competitions, creating surveys and working with negative comments.
4. Advertising through bloggers or platforms Purchase of integrations from bloggers or placement of advertising on sites (seeds).
5. Analytics Tracking coverage, engagement (ER), transitions, lead counts and adjusting strategy based on these data.

What is the difficulty of choosing an SMM specialist

The main problem of business owners is the lack of knowledge about the functions of SMM specialists. Therefore, when hiring employees or choosing agencies, there are often high expectations that are at odds with reality. Let us examine the main problems:

Failure to understand the functionality of the SMM-specialist

I often see vacancies where the following functions are prescribed among the duties of SMM specialists: targeted advertising, Yandex Direct, creation of landing pages. It is a big mistake to demand from a social media specialist what Internet marketers, directologists and targetologists do. As a result, you will simply get a low conversion in your resume, and the worst – a budget drain, because the employee simply will not have the competence to do this work.

Weak nai n

Weak hiring is very much related to the first point, here I want to discuss the importance of understanding what hard and soft skills SMM-manager should have.

Hard skills are much easier to check, since here you can first see the portfolio of a specialist. What to pay attention to:

• Numbers and results are the most important thing. For example, how many subscribers came for a particular period, how many applications there were from an advertising campaign or from a blogger, how many clicks there were on the site with a story. And of course, it would be cool if someone told me why and what they did.

If a specialist sent only the content that he did before, but not the indicators, then his goal is to make content, and this is not the business goals of the company.

• Design and installation. Here it is worth paying attention to the general style and how much it corresponds to the case. Because sometimes the design may not be in your style at all, but in the style of the previous project.
• Copywriting. You can go to the pages of past projects and see how they were conducted. Are there typos in the texts as the text is visually designed?
• Business metrics. Check to see if the SMM has tagged UTM on past projects. Ask him how he tracked the results. What metrics he used.

Soft skills can initially be checked by correspondence: how quickly responds, late at night or during working hours, politely or not. However, the most important thing is to interview the employee correctly.

Now let’s take a look at the hiring guidelines.

Step-by-step instructions for hiring an SMM specialist

When I hire SMM specialists, they send me about 100 resumes, and to select the strongest ones at once, I make selections in 3 stages.

1. Preparation of a vacancy description

Based on the goals of the company and your budget, write down what functions the SMM specialist should perform. The more features you write, the more payment will be. For example, for shooting and working with advertising, the check for our services in the agency is 1.5-2 times higher.

Therefore, write out what is important for you: only an office or a hybrid, and can be completely remote, whether you need shooting with a specialist out, whether you need design skills or whether you have a designer in the state and the SMM manager will interact with him.

At the bottom of the job description, I always prescribe the following paragraph: “If the vacancy is interesting, then write me in private messages the phrase “I want to join the team.” This helps to remove those who are not interested in the vacancy, but simply sends messages to everyone in a row. It also checks for attention.

1. Questionnaire
   The first stage of selection can be done by filling out the questionnaire. This way, you can quickly see if this person is suitable for the position or not. I advise you to make the questionnaire small and without test tasks, as then the conversion rate will be low. At this stage, the goal is to remove from the selection those who are definitely not suitable for you, for example, people from other cities or without a portfolio.
   
2. Interview
   At this stage, we communicate with the candidate, ask him test questions, see whether we are suitable for each other or not.
   
   What to ask in an interview to test a candidate for hard and soft skills:

• What difficulties do you face in working as an SMM manager?
• What are the 3 goals of social networks for the project?
• Where do you start working on the project?
• What indicators will you follow if the goal of the project is to increase awareness?
• What tools will you use to increase project awareness?
• What is important to you when working with us professionally?
• Imagine yourself in a year, who are you?
• If you have 3 tasks that have a deadline at the same time, how will you handle them?
• What is important to you when working on a project?

Find the correct answers to these questions in the Telegram channel of the agency t.me/savvymm

1. Test assignment
   When we have 3-4 candidates left, only then can we send a test assignment. First, you don’t have to test hundreds of creatives, and secondly, the chance that the candidate will do it is much higher, because he will not want to give up after this path.
   
   The tasks may be as follows:
   1. Testing for the ability of installation and design - mount a video or make a series of stories.
   2. To check how the candidate thinks and can build a strategy - give a case and ask him to write where he would start and what he would do to achieve results for this project.
   3. To understand whether the candidate can take responsibility, whether he has leadership qualities, whether he knows how to measure the result – ask the question “Write 1-3 of your class achievements / feedback or what you can simply boast about in SMM and outside it.”
2. Probationary period
   A full assessment of a specialist in the case can only be made in the process of real work. Arrange for a test period (usually the first 2-4 weeks). At this time, it is important to give clear, measurable tasks and carefully monitor three things: whether the candidate meets the deadlines, how he responds to edits, and how independently he seeks solutions, rather than pulling you on each issue. If during this month the specialist showed involvement and gave the first adequate results – congratulations, you have found your man with whom you can safely sign a contract.

To hire a competent specialist, it is not enough just to copy someone else's vacancy, post it and wait for the same candidate. You need to understand how the work of a specialist works, what goals he can help the business and whether he can really do it. And all this is achieved by competent selection of candidates and making the very image of the specialist with whom you would like to work.