Post date: Oct 3, 2015 2:55:30 PM
I wrote an article a few years ago, published it on Buzzfeed and it gathered a few shares on Social Media. It has since been deleted, so I am republishing below :) .
I’ve seen with my own eyes a big agency using Twitter followers as a Key Performance Indicator to indicate “success” to a client, but these followers can be bought or just be Twitterbots (a program used to produce automated posts, or to automatically follow other Twitter users).
These questions can help you find a social media expert. They should know about how social media and Public Relations / Search Engine Optimisation interrelate, and how to show the Return on Investment on their work (including the use of web analytics to illustrate this).
1. What makes you a “social media expert”?
2. Can you spell?
3. Is sales outreach via social media likely to be just social media “experts” talking to each other? What are the best site for social media news?
4. Can you show me some examples of your creative writing / journalism? How can I teach myself social media marketing?
5. What are the top social media sites in the UK / USA? How? Why?
6. Can Social Media help improve a website’s rankings on search engines?
7. Who are the most influential people in the social media industry?
8. What will be the next big social media app or site to die a miserable death like Myspace (despite the best efforts to revive it)? Why? When?
9. Who are the most influential people on social media? Do followers and likes = influence? What tools do you use and for what purpose?
10. Can you give an example of how the spread of certain types of digital devices influence the rise of certain social media (e.g. arguably the rise of the smartphone paved the way for the popularity of Instagram)?
11. What are the up and coming social media sites in the UK / USA? How? Why?
12. What’s changed in social media over the past few days, months (or years)?
13. What is social media? Is it the same as PR? How so PR / SEO interrelate with social media?
14. Does your site rank on Google for anything?
15. What sort of activities should a B2B company engage in online / on Linkedin?
16. Are blogs social media?
17. Why (in the UK at least) are sites like Myspace, Bebo (and Friends Reunited) no longer popular? What (if anything) took their place?
18. Would you recommend Facebook for a B2B company? If yes, why?
19. Do you have case studies / testimonials? What are the laws governing social media marketing (in the UK) - how does this impact your work?
20. What is your view on measures of social media influence e.g. Klout? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these different measures, and how do they differ?
21. How do you measure return on investment on your work? What are your standard KPIs? Has your social media work improved SEO for your clients?
22. Do you use ‘soft metric’ KPIs to judge success like “likes,” comments and follower counts? If so, why?
23. How can I use web analytics to show the effectiveness of social media activity? What’s the difference between a Contributed Social Conversion & a Last Interaction Social Conversion recorded in Google Analytics?
I hope you enjoyed this post and found it useful. If I may, let me ask you to do at least 1 of 2 things (it will help me a lot and I thank you in advance):
1. Please share it through Twitter, Reddit or whatever works for you.
2. Add a comment
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I can help you with defining in general terms a Social Media Strategy (as well as SEO and PPC strategies) for your business, but I don't offer Social Media management services as this is best done by your business.