Due to the widespread use of social media in the past decade, no one can deny that incorporating it  into your company’s marketing plan is a necessary deed. However, maintaining a social media presence can be time consuming. You may find out that you’ll have to hire on someone to fill the role of building, maintaining, and growing your social media presence. So what should you look for when hiring someone to manage your social media presence?

1. Ability to write
The role of the social media person requires producing good content. The skill of effectively communicating ideas in a digestible manner is absolutely crucial in this role. So instead of scanning their Linkedin, it’d be more useful to look at a writing sample. Is their writing covered in grammatical errors? That can make your company look unprofessional. Can they communicate what’s necessary in a concise and interesting manner? To grow a following on social media, it’s important to keep engagement. With all the noise on the internet, attention is hard to fight for. They have to produce content that will capture the audience, so your social media person will definitely need the proper written communication skills.

2. Enthusiasm and upbeat personality
Part of the social media role is being a cheerleader and providing online customer service. Whoever that’s representing your company’s online voice should come off pleasant and welcoming. The role of the social media marketer is a very social one. Hiring someone with a high level of emotional intelligence is ideal. What if there’s an angry customer tweeting out complaints to their thousands of Twitter followers? The social media person should know how to tactfully respond.

3. Understanding of product and brand
This should apply to not only the social media role, but to everyone in the company. However, this is especially important in the social media role because they’re the digital voice of the company. In order to do this well, a strong understanding on what the product does and what the brand embodies is necessary. When your social media voice is not aligned with your brand image, it can frustrate and dissuade your  existing or potential customers.

4. Keep updated on industry news & social media news and trends
In order to produce and share good content, the social media person will have to consume a lot of content. Staying updated with industry news is helpful in order to share and produce content that’s relevant to your brand. They’ll also need to stay up-to-date with social media news and trends. Social media is a rapidly changing field, they should stay updated with what’s going on with Edgerank, what new features Pinterest is rolling out, and more. Like any industry, social media marketers will have to stay on top what’s going on. If they don’t, they might miss out on new tools or new ways to capture and grow an audience.