What does it mean to be a social media expert?  Seeing as just two years ago, no one would know what it even meant (and few do today, as well), it's not like we have degrees, or titles, or even a standard list of questions that can be used to hire someone into a social media position.

To complicate the matter, many social media experts (myself included) started out in fields separate from Marketing, Corporate Communications, or Information Technology.  How then can we determine what someone's value is in terms of their background, when the tools we use define our position, but not our experience?

What exactly is a social media consultant, and how can we build the business case to hire one internally?  How do you go about writing a job description?

 

1) Define your goals:  The biggest danger of Enterprise 2.0 projects is a desire to have a social media team without having a clear business goal to achieve.  We talk about metrics of traffic, SEO, reach, influence, and transparency, but what are these  supposed to achieve? Have a point, and you'll find metrics are much easier to create and sell.

 

2) Search for relevant experience: If you can determine what your business goals are, it should be easy to determine what skills are needed to reach those goals.  An example would be building a social network to improve customer service communication.  Knowing what you want, allows you to pick the tool, and then hire a community manager to run the process.  Only after the goal is defined, can you determine if someone's experience building a not-for-profit online community is an experience you need, even if the individual has no customer service management background.

 

3) Base salary range on the business metrics.  Many people want to leave their careers for a job in social media.  That's okay, but you shouldn't be paying for them to make an equal salary jump.  At the same time, creating an entry level salary isn't going to get you the talent you need to succeed.  Once again, it comes back to the business goals you wish to achieve.  If your goals are increased revenue, paying someone in the six-figure range is acceptable.  If your goal is increased publicity online and testing the waters, you can achieve that for $50-$70,000.

Hiring a social media candidate is not as simple as other positions, but it also shouldn't be a guess or a shot in the dark. Understand what you want to achieve, and then set the salary for a level that makes sense for your organization.