Social Media Headhunter

When Should You Add A Social Media Consultant?

One of the big complaints in the SEO industry is the tendency of companies to come to you after they've built their website.  The idea is that after you've conceived a project, funded it, built, tested and deployed the site, the SEO guy can come in and "add some optimization."

Those companies deserve to get soaked with high consulting fees.

User Interface Design had much the same problem.  After the site is built, many companies look for some kind of magic face transplant from the UI Design team, which is a bit like asking an architect to come in and improve a house after it has been built.

As social media becomes more prevalent, the same philosophy is taking root.  Companies either look for a tangential social media project (wasted money), or they look to add a social media component on top of an existing campaign, without access to marketers, corporate communications, or executives.

Stop wasting your money.  If you want to get involved in social media, the time to do so is months before you want to use the platform to push a message.  Building a reputation in a community and laying the groundwork for search engine optimization and traffic should be occurring months before you write the first piece of code or buy your first ad.  The reasoning is simple.

1) Social media gives you a real-time monitoring advantage which can impact decision making. 
2) The longer a website is up, the more impact it has in Google.  Simply writing content on a site before you launch it can boost your SEO and give you a highly-ranked site prior to the official launch.
3) Taking the time to learn a community before you spend money on it is common sense.  They know more than you do about what they want.
4) Building trust prior to launch gives you enthusiastic evangelists who help spread the word of your launch.
5) If your idea is the worst thing since the Edsel, Social Media campaigns will give you plenty of warning about your course before you sink big bucks into a project.

I've made a lot of bold statements there, so let me clarify.  Before every statement, insert, "A properly executed and well-thought out social media campaign..."  Simply signing up for a Facebook account and adding friends on Twitter won't give you these results.  Seriously - those don't even qualify as campaigns.  It would be like posting a flyer in your neighborhood and calling it an ad campaign.

So where does that leave us?  If you plan to implement a social media campaign for a product, service, or website, the time to do so is at least two months before you commit to a final budget, and preferably six months before site launch.

Community Manager Questions

RecruitingBlogs.com is a staffing and recruiting social network that boasts almost 12,000 members.  In terms of community size, it's not the largest of the disciplines, but the recruiting blogosphere has been active and influential in the last three years, getting an early start as a networking tool for recruiters.

John Sumser has been writing some great posts about what's happening inside this community, and last week's touched on the question of acceptable behaviors in a community.  It's not couched in terms that social media specialists would use, but anyone who has run a community can surely sympathize, and it's a great example of what to expect as a community manager. 

John set about trying to discuss what it took to make a community work, but the comment section quickly became an example of thread hijacking, moderation, and the difficulty of being understood online.  As in all instances, I urge you to read, read, read, to get the full story - and save your comments if you don't have something positive to add, but the question that so often comes up is how much leeway should the community manager give the community members?

And if you're hiring a community manager, do you want one with a firm hand, or one that encourages sugar and spice and everything nice?

Be careful before you answer that.  It's a trick question that will affect your traffic, influence, reputation, and it may end with heavy legal bills, a PR disaster, or the biggest, most influential , and profitable community in your industry.  The choice of a community manager is not an easy one, and although some great work has been done on researching what it's like, let me offer a few questions to help you in your search.

Community Questions:

1.  What is the purpose of the community?
2.  How big do you want it go grow?
3.  Do you have a major brand behind it to drive traffic?
4.  Realistically, how big will it get.  Now go out and ask some social media people you trust how big they think it will get.  Are those numbers close?
5.  How do you plan to monetize it?  Ads?  Referrals? Product Placement?  Branding?  Subscriptions?
6.  Is the tech ready to go?  Is it simple, or complex? 
7.  What is your marketing plan for the community?

Community Manager Questions:
1.  What communities have you run in the past?  How much control did you have?
2.  What was the purpose of those communities, and did you succeed in the original purpose?
3.  What help did you have? 
4.  Where do you hang out online now? 
5.  What would a search of your name and community turn up on different search engines and/or forum search engines?
6.  Is there a single software that monitors blogs, social networks, forums, and the general web (that answer is no)
7. What is the difference between those types of sites, and how do you monitor each?
8. What tools did you use for online monitoring, and what was their cost?
9.  What was your reporting structure like? How did you communicate with management what was happening, and how did you create relevant metrics?
10.  Flame wars:  How do you/should you stop them?
11. How do you deal with security risks (youth sites)
12.  How do you deal with crazy people? 
13.  Write some responses (forum/e-mail/blogposts) to deal with hostile commenters/users.
14.  Who matters online?  How do you know when something needs attention beyond your department?
15.  What hours does a community manager work?

For more on this topic, check out Connie Bensen's multiple posts on the subject, including her latest salary survey for community managers.

Mobile Marketing Employees In Social Media

Mobile marketing isn't taking off. At least, it's not taking off the way it should.

I know some of these guys.  They can set up some really radical promotions that combine social media tools with viral marketing and have an impact far in excess of the money you spend.  But no one does it.

Partly, it's the risk factor.  If you think finding a social media marketing consultant or employee with experience is hard, wait until you try to find someone who has run a comprehensive, integrated mobile plan with solid results.  I think I'd have to charge 30% on a retained search to tackle that kind of position.  Without the right personnel, and the right infrastructure, and the right product, mobile can be hard. 

People are touchy about their cell phones, and since they actually pay for them, they're not too keen on the traditional ways of advertising on them.  You can run banner ads on Twitter or Gmail, but if do so on my phone, I'll be finding a new carrier.

So what do you do?  You use a social media solution. Mobile marketers do a lot of talking.  And surprisingly, they do it on text, in blogs, and in forums.  As it's a new industry, there is a lot of sharing of good information.  Education is still the difficult part of the sale, so the more success mobile marketers see, the better off the whole industry is.

As a start, I'd recommend a few of the following blogs

Carnival of the Mobilists
Situational Marketing
Mobivity
SMS Text News
Mobile Marketing Profits
Mobile Marketing Watch

And of course, if you need a mobile marketing expert with a social media bent, you know a headhunter who can find one for you, for the right price.