Here is a 10-point checklist for choosing a social media marketer.
1. Has the person built an online community before? How many people participated and how did they interact with each other?
2. How long has the person been working with user-generated content? What kind of content and how much have they worked with, and how intimately?
3. Small, independent, highly interactive web communities offer marketers excellent learning experiences. Check the marketer’s client list for attributes like connecting community members with each other, helping members find content online, helping members build a repository of quality content (not junk content), and viral success.
4. Be on the lookout for buzzwords used to make a marketer sound more social-media savvy than s/he really is. Rather than listening for keywords like tagging, Facebook, WOMM, Digg, blogging, and Twitter, listen for concepts like fostering community interaction, facilitating discovery, relinquishing control, open culture, application platforms, and reputation building.
5. Being a participant in a user-generated content community is not the same as building or running one. Does the marketer have community management experience?
6. Some social-media savvy folks don’t have commensurate experience working with corporate clients. Make sure your marketer can understand your needs as well as the social media scene.
7. Web design or online publishing experience is not equivalent to social media experience. Social media is people communicating amongst themselves, not just visiting a site that’s made by professionals.
8. Corporate messaging experience is not a selling point for social media expertise. The more corporate messaging experience your marketer has, the worse they may be at social media advice.
9. Don’t be fooled by a blue-chip client list. Big-name clients are still less likely to have cutting edge social media strategies, so this isn’t a case where “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” applies.
10. Work directly with the expert, as opposed to with someone who works for the expert.
Or, you can just hire me!
