Have a look at how many cupcake companies there are around at the moment? Then multiply it by about 100 for the amount of Social Media gurus or Social Media experts you’ll find in Manchester alone
For an industry that tells people to stand out and be different to the unitiated they all look remarkably the same. The same tweets about the same articles from the same sources; the same facebook cover pictures; the same wacky American smiles even though you live in Manchester…
… to the unitiated social media user it’s often hard to tell the difference when choosing who will fully manage your social media or who will train you on Social Media
So here’s a few things to look out for when choosing yours
TESTIMONIALS / RECOMMENDATIONS
For myself this is the ultimate reference point when selecting who you use as a Social Media Manager / Trainer
If they are as good as they say they are they’ll have a stack of testimonials / recommendations on Linkedin which will highlight the many different variants of their skills rather than saying “XXX is bloody brilliant, a really friendly guy”
Dig a little deeper as to who has recommended them and chances are you’ll have some 2nd connections with them i.e people they’ve trained who you know
As we know from that people buy from people they meet, know, like and trust – a recommendation from a friend you trust say’s a lot
Why not look at our linkedin here and add us up so you can look at the sort of recommendations you should be looking at
EXPERIENCE
Look at the background of the person involved. Like a lot of businesses there are people will little experience of their field who simply claim to be gurus after paying £XXX into a Social Media Franchise. It’s a not uncommon experience in all aspects of businesses and while there is certainly nothing against franchises it’s reassuring to deal with somebody you know has been there, done that and ran a successful online marketing campaign for their own business
Before I set up Altrincham HQ I’d worked on campaigns for large scale 15,000 capacity music festivals, been an events manager for 10 years and a journalist on international publications for 6 years previous to that. In terms of blogging and online activity i’d had single blog posts read by over 500,000 people
The proof was there – been there, done it myself – a teacher who can do, as well as teach, is invaluable
THEIR OWN SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVITY
Believe it or not there are Social Media “gurus” who rarely tweet, never engage and have 10 twitter followers
On the opposite end of the scale there are gurus who tweet often (but still never engage” and have 65,000 “fake” followers
All the things that you’ve read about Social Media being about engagement and consistency and relationship building – it’s true and if the person training or working on your campaign isn’t doing if themselves – think again
THE DEPTH OF TRAINING
How indepth does the training go in terms of your social media platforms? Is it literally just setting up your respective platforms or is it looking further into strategy
When I work with clients they often want more than just a basic account set up package and want to know how to work the mechanics, work the message and work the strategy.
We work on a one-on-one company basis as well as group sessions
The individual message is very much ingrained in everything I do as I’ve always believed in substance over style
ROI – RETURN ON INVESTMENT OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Social Media is free to use – the time spent doing however isn’t and ROI should be something that’s looked at in the initial session
I work primarily with SMEs and the average spend per customer for different clients can be anything from £4 to £100, clients have won massive orders over twitter for £7500, but then the smaller clients have picked up new customers that might spend small amounts of £4 a day which add up to massive amounts throughout the year
Early on in business I was told that income streams need to be identified for every business and that every revenue stream is tracked and accounted for. When Social Media comes into the equation there really should be a system in place to track time spent on social media vs income generated
And that’s just a few of the areas you should be looking at when choosing your Social Media Manager / Trainer
Any questions just ask in the comments section below
NEED HELP WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA?
Chat to about Social Media Marketing for YOUR business so we can better understand YOU and what will grow your business
We can only find out what is unique to your business by chatting to you
Look at our Social Media Training and Social Media Management services
Or
Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
