How to Hire a Social Media Manager for Your Business

Social Media Manager to help grow your Business

So you finally decided to hire your own Social Media Manager. Congratulations! Welcome to the company of many small and medium scale businesses that are wisely considering hiring a Social Media Manager.

While other businesses go through the painstaking and costly process of first attempting to run their own social media campaign and eventually realising the task is better left to the experts, you have wisely taken the path that will prove more cost-efficient for your business.

Many of these businesses who took on managing their own social media accounts have also realised that they simply just have too much going on their plate and that social media management, while indispensable to marketing the business, is taking time away from the actual running of the business.

Others simply don’t have the time to learn, understand, and keep up with web technologies and tools nor do they have the patience, skills and demeanour to research, post, develop original interesting content, engage and nurture communities that are essential aspects of a social media manager’s job description.

So then, how do you select someone who fits your unique business needs?

How much will hiring a Social Media Manager cost you?

Several factors help dictate the cost of hiring a Social Media Manager:

Part time vs. Full time. Small and medium-scale businesses may not be able to afford hiring a full time social media manager like big companies do. The part time or outsourced social media manager is the most practical, flexible and cost effective alternative for smaller businesses.
Experience Counts. A 5-year exceptional experience can bring the cost to the higher price range of the bracket while social media manager who is just starting out gets the lower end of the price range.
Service Requirements. There all kinds of businesses, organisations or individuals that require different kinds of services from a social media manager.

As there are varied social media service requirements there are also many kinds of part time social media managers.

4 Types of Part-time Social Media Managers

what sort of social media manager do you want

Basic Social Media Manager
Social Media Manager who does Lead Generation
Social Media Manager who does Brand Awareness
Social Media Manager who does both Lead Generation and Brand Awareness

Social Media Managers become the representative and mouth piece of the company in the world of social media. It is therefore important that the person you hire will have a good understanding and grasp of your goals and the company’s vision to properly reach out and share to your followers, fans, customers and online community.

The Part Time Basic Social Media Manager

Hours Rendered. 10 hours of work a week with a rate of $60+ per hour
Job Title. Part-Time Virtual Community Manager
Job Description. Content curator for posting and repurposing the content you created, or search the net to share interesting, relevant, inspirational posts; not expected to create original content
Basic Skills. Required to have a good command of spelling and vocabulary, proofread comments and updates social media about your blog posts, adept at using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest
Expectations. Provide the proper reply on common customer service questions while forwarding important and complex questions to you for speedy resolution; moderating and implementing the guidelines for appropriate discourse, making sure that visitors fans and followers follow the guidelines

The Part Time Social Media Manager Who Does Lead Generation

Hours Rendered. Not less than 20 hours of work a week, with the rate of $80+ per hour
Job Title. Part-Time Virtual Community Manager
Job Description. Can set up landing pages integrated with your marketing system to sign up and increase sales through nurturing leads for prospective customers for your email marketing program; Able to create high quality content; Post and repurpose the content you created, or search the net to share interesting, relevant, inspirational postsBasic Skills. Can create Call to Action campaigns; Edit Graphics with basic html, css and javascript; Can do A/B Testing; Required to have a good command of spelling and vocabulary, proofread comments and updates social media about your blog posts, adept at using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest
Expectations. Do lead generation from social media to email marketing even while serving as social media manager who provides the proper reply on common customer service questions while forwarding important and complex questions to you for speedy resolution; moderating and implementing the guidelines for appropriate discourse, making sure that visitors fans and followers follow the guidelines

The Part Time Social Media Manager Who Does Brand Awareness

Hours Rendered. Not less than 10 hours of work a week, the rate goes from about $90+ per hour
Job Title. Part-Time Virtual Community Manager
Job Description. Create original content, at the same time seek to increase search engine ranking; Create and implement social media marketing strategy and research with PR outreach; Post and repurpose the content you created, or search the net to share interesting, relevant, inspirational posts
Basic Skills. Can do graphic design; Required to have a good command of spelling and vocabulary, proofread comments and updates social media about your blog posts, adept at using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest
Expectations. Success is usually measured by increase in likes, shares and comments; provides the proper reply on common customer service questions while forwarding important and complex questions to you for speedy resolution; moderating and implementing the guidelines for appropriate discourse, making sure that visitors fans and followers follow the guidelines

The Part Time Social Media Manager Who Does Lead Generation, Brand Awareness

Hours Rendered. A minimum of 20 to 30 hour work week with not less than $140+ per hour
Job Title. Part-Time Virtual Community Manager
Job Description. Can set up landing pages integrated with your marketing system to sign up and increase sales through nurturing leads for prospective customers for your email marketing program; Able to create high quality content; Create original content, at the same time seek to increase search engine ranking; Create and implement social media marketing strategy and research with PR outreach; Post and repurpose the content you created, or search the net to share interesting, relevant, inspirational posts
Basic Skills. Can create Call to Action campaigns; Edit Graphics with basic html, css and javascript; Can do A/B Testing; Can do graphic design; Required to have a good command of spelling and vocabulary, proofread comments and updates social media about your blog posts, adept at using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest
Expectations. It is very uncommon and very hard to find a freelancer or someone who would be willing to work part time with so much load, doing your social media management. Higher investment is expected. Do lead generation from social media to email marketing even while serving as social media manager; Success is usually measured by increase in likes, shares and comments; provides the proper reply on common customer service questions while forwarding important and complex questions to you for speedy resolution; moderating and implementing the guidelines for appropriate discourse, making sure that visitors fans and followers follow the guidelines

It will be indeed a daunting task for a business owner to concentrate on tasks a social media manager needs to do to have a successful online media campaign while at the same time be on top of all the other major concerns and other functions to properly run a successful business.

The practical solution is to seek help by outsourcing all these activities through a social media full service digital marketing agency.

It is more practical to hire a social media manager to help your company grow its online presence.