20 Social Media Manager Interview Questions for 2022

The Internet is rapidly socializing, which is the primary trend of the modern online environment. Today there are tens of thousands of different social networks and services. The power of social networking is such that the number of worldwide users is expected to reach some 3.43 billion monthly active social media users by 2023. So, social media marketing becomes a powerful tool for business growth: the formation and improvement of the image, increasing the level of sales. With an eye on this trend, the profession of a social media manager appeared.

An SMM manager is a specialist who promotes the company on social media and attracts the audience’s attention to its brand using social platforms. Social media managers develop and maintain the organization’s presence in the information field of the virtual world, work daily on creating new content, constantly introduce innovations to generate modern ideas and formats. They also monitor the analytics and performance indicators of the projects carried out. An SMM manager can be a part of the marketing team and work alone on specific tasks.

Bringing a competent social media manager on board is quite a challenge today. How to differentiate a millennial with knowledge in social platforms from someone with the proper skill set? To help you understand if the right expert sits in front of you, we have compiled 20 social media interview questions to ask.

20 Social Media Interview Questions

1. How will social media help our business?

At the stage of the first conversation, competent specialists can clearly state what benefits their work will bring. Social networks are millions of audiences, users among whom there are your potential customers. And a good specialist will explain how to build activity in such a way as to attract them.

2. What social channels does our business need?

After the specialist has explained why you need SMM, ask to specify which social networks it is better to promote the brand on and why the choice is exactly that.

Choosing a social channel is based on understanding which content formats are suitable for your specific business, which network is more prevalent among potential customers, how to achieve your goals faster, and much more.

3. Introduce our company to me as if I were a potential customer.

This is the question that needs to be answered right away, and therefore interviewees are often caught off guard. However, it is a good chance for applicants to demonstrate how great they know your product, service, or industry.

4. How will you keep the audience active and engaged?

Just posting news and photos to a business page is not enough. The content strategy divides all the community’s content into different types, each of which needs to be given special attention.

The content plan provides for communicative and entertaining content to keep the audience engaged. Making communication exciting and making a joke in time is the superpower of a good SMM specialist. However, in addition to this, social media managers have their own set of tools for increasing activity, which they will implement into your project.

5. What tools do you use in your work?

Every professional SMM specialist should work with analytics, posting, and audience search services. Analytics services will help them track changes in community indicators and adjust their work if necessary. The publication planner will prepare all materials in advance and get them live at the right time.

Your company may already have a social media management tool, or you may be searching for a recommendation. First, ask the specialists to specify which instruments they prefer and why.

6. How will social networks interact with our website?

If your company has a website, working with social networks is not a reason to abandon it. On the contrary, both tools should work together and complement each other competently. The specialists should explain how they connect these two tools and achieve the result.

7. How do you track trends in SMM? Whom do you consider an authority?

Ask the specialists about their work. At a minimum, they must quickly and clearly explain what they are reading or watching to stay up to date with SMM innovations.

8. How do you deal with the negative?

One of the tasks of an SMM specialist is to build communication with subscribers competently. Your brand’s image depends on how the SMM specialist can handle the negative reviews. Therefore, ask in advance how they plan to work in this direction.

9. Do you have any personal projects?

Good SMM managers can boast of their own small (or large) projects. A personal page or some community/group becomes something like a testing platform for promotion techniques. Ask them to provide you with more details of their personal projects and testing experiments.

10. Outline the key strategies you will use to generate leads.

Social media lead generation is all about the flow of the target audience (traffic) and guaranteed rapid sales growth (high conversion). Lead generation from the social environment is usually the most effective and high-quality. It is a complex process during which you need to use the potential of advertising cabinets of social networks, cross-posting, mailing lists, and other tools. Ask the specialist to specify the main strategies to achieve these results.

11. How to make SEO work with the help of social media?

While SEO and SMM are different branches of Internet marketing, they are nevertheless very interconnected – both of them attract traffic to the site. Ask them to talk more about Google algorithms and policies, Google Analytics. Pay attention to their knowledge of local SEO, and if it is should be part of your business’s overall marketing strategy.

12. What tools will you use to measure the ROI of social media campaigns?

From “likes,” “shares,” and “retweets,” it would be nice to move on to specific indicators and the conversion rate. Ask SMM specialists whether they use the methods of online tracking campaigns or analytics tools (for example, Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and more). Also, ask the applicants how they track and improve Facebook metrics and the number of retweets on Twitter.

13. Describe your biggest work-related failure.

Recruiters ask questions about failures in work to find out the applicant’s attitude to difficult professional situations, what conclusions were made, and how the applicant managed to cope with them. Please pay attention to what they did (or did not do) to ensure a similar failure would not occur again.

14. What do you think of TikTok, and if this channel is suitable for our business?

TikTok is a media platform best suited for small and medium-sized businesses that work with retail customers. Still, not for all. Check with SMM specialists if they find TikTok helpful for your specific brand. If so, ask them to specify a few tips on how to blow up on TikTok.

15. Can we see examples of your past or present SMM work?

Request examples of works, profiles, pages that the applicant previously worked on for other customers. Look at the portfolio, evaluate the level and quality of specific tasks. Then, ask questions about the resulting lead conversion rates based on the work results described in the examples.

16. What do you think of customer service as part of your strategy?

Having customer support in social networks is no longer in doubt. Today, people spend a tremendous amount of time on social media, and it is much more convenient for them to ask their questions right here, without going to the company’s official website. So first, check if the applicants consider it a good idea. If so, verify how they will implement customer support into their strategy and how to approach each type of conversation.

17. Are you in contact with any opinion leaders in our industry?

Ideally, an applicant for this position should already be in contact with opinion leaders in your field of activity. This will undoubtedly lead to brand awareness growth in the online space. To find out the quality of connections with agents of influence, check the list of those the applicant is subscribed to on social media.

18. Who are our competitors, and what are they doing on social media?

There are practically no products and services that do not have competitors. Therefore, knowing and understanding your competitors is an essential vector that complements the development of any business.

An answer to this question will show if they did good industry research before the interview and are ready to work in this direction.

19. Describe the most significant accomplishment in your career.

Some recruiting experts consider this question the only one that matters. The most critical elements are the details underlying the accomplishment. This is what real interviewing is about – delving into the details.

20. Why should our company hire you over other applicants?

This question is often asked closer to the end of the interview as a generalizing one. The right direction of the answer is to show what makes an applicant unique while not discrediting competitors. You give SMM specialists a chance to highlight their personal and professional strengths, skillset, and experience.

Conclusion

Since 2010, we have seen serious growth in social media management tool investments. As a result, there is a growing need for specialists who understand the mechanisms of social networks, who can show the technical and creative possibilities of this communication channel for business.

When you decide to hire a social media manager to promote your business, it is essential to assess who is in front of you immediately. When the wrong candidate is hired, you should expect much money spent, lost profits, damaged reputation, and other negative consequences. Therefore, ask your applicants these 20 questions to understand if a highly-skilled specialist will be a part of your team. Happy hiring!