As with the dating world, there are always key characteristics to look for. These will boost the chance of a positive and successful match and increase your ROI.
Social firms should:
- Be technical, but also grounded in marketing and brand strategy.
- Understand that they must reach both influencers and key target audiences with your messages.
- Be open to (and perhaps champion) the idea of eventually transitioning their social media efforts to a client’s internal team. Many believe that it’s best to have internal client-side employees communicating on behalf of the brand. So, clients will sometimes wish to have a plan to transition the efforts and train or hire internal staff from the onset.
- Ask questions about your corporate preferences and ‘personality’. For instance: will you be completely transparent and willingly allow (if not encourage) employees to tweet about your firm? Or will you ask that they leave tweeting to your corporate team?
- Advise you in developing a plan to respond to any negative comments before launching a campaign.
- Honestly assess if your target audiences and/or influencers will be effectively reached via social media.
- Measure a campaign’s success. Sentiment and share of voice are commonly used as metrics for social campaigns, but a willingness to develop a measurement plan based on ROI and sales is best practice.
We’ve found this article to be a great resource…Which questions would you recommend that clients ask of prospective social media consultants?
