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Social Media Savvy: What to look for when hiring talent

Milena Regos
Out & About Marketing

Thinking of hiring someone for social media? Here are important skills to consider:

Writing skills: A great social media person will be able to clearly communicate the brand’s message. While visual communication is important these days, it’s just as important to have strong writing skills, from writing a blog post or tweet to editing your website and creating any other content for your brand.

Creativity: You want your brand to stand out from the hundreds of messages people see online daily. For example, each time you go to Facebook, you can see more than 1,500 messages in your newsfeed. With users’ attention spans down to a few seconds, your posts need to be able to capture their attention instantly. Being crafty will help your messages stand out.



Tech savvy: To have a Facebook page doesn’t mean you understand how to use it for business. Some companies tend to hire millennials, or as they’re sometimes called, the first “digital natives” (75 percent have an online profile.) Although younger people are more tech savvy, social media is much more than just being active on social networks. Your entire brand presence and communication strategy is exposed on social media. If you’re unsure about leaving the company’s social presence in the hands of the youngest person, remember that millennials will represent 50-70 percent of the workforce generation in the next 10 years. Learning to work with them is critical.

Design skills: The human brain processes visual 600,000 times faster than text, according to Ekaterina Walter, the author of “The Power of Visual Storytelling.” Your content should always include an element of design even if it’s a PowerPoint or a simple design from free websites such as PicMonkey or Canva. Taking your content and making it visual will increase your reach on social media, getting to more people faster.



Video skills: Cisco predicts that by 2017, videos will make up 69 percent of all Internet traffic in the world, so make sure your social media person is able to create videos for you. Thanks to social networks such as YouTube, with Vimeo and 3 billion video views a day, videos are gaining momentum in content marketing. Harness the power of Vine and Snapchat’s 8-second videos and see how it helps tell your brand story better than 1,000 words.

Analytics and measurements: Your social media person should be able to provide you not only with the right analytics and measurements to make sure you are achieving your goals but also an insightful interpretation and strategic guidance on what the data means so you can improve your content marketing over time.

Out&About Marketing is always on the look out for talented people. If you know someone who has these skills, and is interested in a job, tell them to contact us.

Milena Regos is principal and founder of Out & About Marketing, an Incline Village-based digital marketing and social media consulting firm. She can be reached for comment at milena@outandaboutmarketing.com. This article first appeared on http://www.outandaboutmarketing.com.


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