Seven Things To Keep In Mind When Hiring A Social Media Manager
February 2nd, 2012
As more and more casinos recognize the need to hire a dedicated Social Media or Community Manager, the question we are constantly being asked is, “what skills and qualities are needed to do the job?”
It takes a special person with the right skill set to effectively manage your brand on social media. Here are a few qualities that make up the ideal person for the job:
Understands the medium and has a passion for it.
Ideally, they should have run brand pages and managed social communities in the past, as there are differences in how brands behave on social media, as compared to how “real” people use their personal pages. But as you are probably aware, experienced Social Media Managers are hard to come by. As an option, look for a marketing professional (possibly within your own organization) that loves the medium and has lots of experience using it personally to interact with their favorite brands. They should not only be active on Facebook but on other channels such as Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Knows the property, your marketing strategy and brand.
Social media is an excellent channel to help achieve marketing goals, whether it’s creating awareness, improving customer service or combating problems like perceived lack of winning. For this reason, it’s imperative that the social media manager be intimately familiar with the property, its marketing goals, strategy and brand. This person must also have an intimate knowledge of the physical property itself, its offerings and the people who work there. There will be many fan questions – from where to find specific slot machines to how much the buffet costs – and the manager will need to know these answers, or how to find them. Social media also gives us a unique opportunity to allow fans a behind the scenes look at the property and staff, which increases customer engagement and loyalty. It will be important for the manager to have access to this information in order to share it.
Understands your customer and what they value.
In order for a social media manager to create a large and vibrant social community, they need to understand what casino enthusiasts find interesting, important, valuable or funny. One of the many responsibilities of a Social Media Manager is to be a conversation starter and to do so they need to create content or “posts” that the community will find interesting, want to engage with and share. They need to know the lingo and understand your customers’ “hot buttons” including things that annoy them as well as the things that excite them.
Customer-service oriented.
Social media channels are ideal for learning about and improving customer service. Again, fans will ask questions, which will need to be answered honestly and promptly. They will also sometimes compliment you happily and they will sometimes complain about you bitterly. Whether positive or negative, however, all comments must be addressed by the social media manager. This person should enjoy interacting with fans, take answering their questions and getting them information seriously, and be personable at all times.
Interactive skills.
The manager should have basic interactive skills. There are many ways to customize Facebook pages, from creating custom tabs that act like mini websites, to programming applications for promotions and fan engagement activities.
Creative.
Creativity is a must! Whether it’s creative writing to craft wall posts that get fans engaged and interacting, or brainstorming interesting ideas for content, or simply answering fans in a funny way that makes them smile, creativity is the key to being successful.
Proactive and flexible.
Social media is an immediate medium – content that is posted today, is old tomorrow. It is ever-evolving and new opportunities and challenges arise every day. The social media manager must love working in a fast paced environment and have a passion for staying up to date on new innovations. Social media takes time. There is the daily monitoring of the page, researching information, answering fans, planning and running of promotions, creating interesting content, keeping graphics updated, posting photos, doing benchmarking and analysis, etc. In this medium more than any other, the more time you put in, the more you will get out.
