12 Typical Questions Asked During A Social Media Expert Interview
When a timepass activity becomes your source of greatest career achievement, what can be better than that? Such very new, very instinctive career line is Social Media — a profound sub-set of Digital Marketing. Now because Social Media Marketing is a dynamic skill field & definitely on a high these days, more and more people are leaning towards exploring this domain. However, due to the generalized nature of work, there is a lot of hue and cry among candidates who are looking for great opportunities in Social Media. It’s basically a fix! The confusion is on the skill spectrum of the job. What precise skills the employer may seek in the candidate, will the skill set be same for all organizations, how can one shine during interviews while remaining the honest self, what or how the work or profiles can be shown to the employer, is personal branding on all social media channels crucial, etc.
Well, Don’t Worry!
Here are 12 Typical Questions that an employer might ask you on a general scale to see whether you fit absolutely in the profile he/she seeks or not.
Read them, understand them and make your best move in the next interview lined up. I am sure you will be the selected one!
There is a division of questions in two domain — Technical and Personal.
First up — Technical Questions
Q 1. How do you use Social Media (SM) as a tool for customer service or brand promotion?
A 1. First things First, remember one need to keep calm even if he/she doesn’t know the answer in the first moment. Take your time, like 5 calm seconds, and then try to craft a precise answers to that question (neither too short, nor too big).
Now the answer to this is very simply.
Start by saying Social Media is a great tool to promote brand and/or company among different kinds of audience. You can how profiling the audience is stepping stone is understanding how your strategy may work on different channels.
One can converse directly with costumer over platforms like FB, Twitter, etc., use analytic to know the exact response of the customer on whether he/she gets the purpose of the product and/or sentiment of the campaign content, one can influence them directly or find other influences to promote the product or brand (like other existing customers, bloggers, followers, etc.). End it by saying, that since you understand this aspect of social media channels, you think of it as a perfect tool for customer service (in the sense, withstanding the demands of varied customer base).
Q 2. How do you measure ROI (Return on Investment)?
A 2. Although calculating SM’s ROI comprises of almost 61 different elements (which I will blog about in another article), you need to remember, it’s a technical round so the employer would be more interested in knowing what tools you use rather than elements.
Simply say — One can calculate ROI by using tools like Conversion Measurement and Optimized CRM (Customer Relationship Management) free (to an extent & most likely paid, now) tools on platforms like FB. Website has its own ROI analytics set-up in which SM channels can be embedded and then monitored. However, if you are asking what fundamental measures are there for ROI calculation, then in general those are — Clicks, Likes, Shares, Purchases, Change of Sentiment, etc. *Tricky sub-question: Is more Impression an ROI? Well not for organic and only bottom funnel metric for paid. So, a hard no for both
Q 3. Which Social Media Analysis tool is better?
A 3. The answer here differs since it is entirely a choice. The Choice is determined by various factors like platforms used — paid, unpaid, metrics one has to measure primarily, interface of the tool that sits well with the one using it day in and day out, algorithm quality of the tool, and ofcourse budget. However, you can list a few existing top platforms but do not forget to give a short&sweet reason for your judgement on those tools.
E.g; Hootsuite was on top of the game in 2014–2016 because of its easy interactive interface; multiple channels can be easily managed on one dashboard. Even now though it’s user share has reduced, it’s still one of the quick tools out there one can purchase if budget is tight. One can schedule tweets & Fb posts and can collaborate with other team members via the common dashboard. SocialSprout does the same, the only difference is in the interface. Buffer is one of the rising SM management platforms, famous for its interface element that seems natural to use. A more mature social media tool is KonnectInsights due to evolving algorithms, API accesses and it’s single-interface-multiple-function ops. You can post, do community management and deep listening all in one.
But now with more restrictions on API as well as customer base after Cambridge Analytica incident, very few tools have retained high standards. You can end the answer by saying, that I find “xyz” tool best among the lot because it seemed effective & convenient. However, all the other platforms are great too. The important thing to consider is which tool is most efficient to accomplish the task in hand.
- If you haven’t used any tool, be honest. Just say that I have not used any such tool because social platforms themselves give a very elaborate free tool for the management work & I happen to have required do only those till this date. But, I have fair idea of such tools and when the need be, I will definitely rise to the challenge, learn & execute it fast.
Q 4. What is the Benefit of LinkedIn Group vs LinkedIn Page?
A 4. Both are beneficial in their own terms. LinkedIn Group tend to have better reach and automated content generation function, as one conversation is tossed and turned again & again by the people in the group, who respond and/or link the pages to & from it (in a given set of time). However, there is no SEO value in the Group as nobody cares about the keyword usage in content, instead they are more concerned with the propagation of the sentiment associated with the posts. LinkedIn Pages on the other hand are highly personalized, carry greater SEO value (in a sense) but have lesser reach in comparison to Group.
Q 5. How will you leverage YOUTUBE to promote our brand and increase the engagement till the target value is reached?
A 5. Now Youtube is an interesting platform — Well-known, and people love to see videos. Infact, it is easy for a company to make its product viral via Youtube channel. Most industries are factor in the same thing while approaching this paltform. So I would, along with my team if any, leverage youtube by constructing video campaign that will serve as a promoter of what the company is offering as well as touch the chord of people’s sentiment/outlook. Few such examples are Dollar Shave Club, Talent Spirit, etc.
Second up — Personal Questions
Q 6. How Active are you on Social Media?
A 6. Start by saying, “Quite active.” Follow this with a set of activities you do on almost daily basis apart from brand/company you are working in. Talk about groups/communities you are or were part of; Twitteratis you follow; Blogs you write (if you have a specific blog site — great! Talk about it. If not, then make one and quickly write couple of articles to amp up your profile); preference of channels for personal usage; work of Social media influencers you closely watch, etc. Expand it as much as you can, but beware of lying about it. State only what’s factually true.
- The more experienced we are, the more frustrated we feel to explain what we have done till now because it’s a lot; and also, because we feel that it’s visible on platforms we have worked on. But, one need to remember, the interviewer may or may not have a sound knowledge of how social media works in real. But because he/she carries a certain amount of influence on the company’s decision to hire you, he/she would have a desire to know what you are (professionally) to judge your candidature.
The more detailed & truthful explanation you can give (without cutting things short), the better is your chance of selection. Make them believe that you love your work and so you are never tired to talk about it at length. However, again keeping time in mind, pre-evaluate the important & impressive aspects of your activities on Social media, stick to one or two platforms that you are most associated with and weave a good story around it. Don’t feel shy adding an anecdote about the time/s you were upgrading your personal profile.
Q 7. What Social Campaigns have you produced and/or managed?
A 7. Give 2–3 examples of your best campaigns created till date; tell them how you communicated actively with the customers during the entire campaign timeline and became a direct influencer in changing their sentiment about the product/brand. Also, speak of how you created interesting stories that went with the brand/product image and increased the overall engagement. If you dealt with a negative response/sentiment during a campaign, mention that too (it will show how capable you are in handling Social Media crisis).
Q 8. Which Platform you are best in using & why?
A 8. TRICKY… I Know. With tie-breaker questions like these, one feels like lying a bit to show the competency. But you must refrain yourself from doing that since you will ultimately be judged and put up for tasks after knowing such details. If you will lie about knowing a platform that you have never worked on before, good chances are you may end up executing tasks on the very same platform because the company needs to facelift it. Result — Doom! So only talk about platforms you have used and are best at. As with social media it’s an individual choice of platform usage, the employer will not fault it out. However do not forget to add relative reason for preference.
E.g; Say that I am best at using Facebook because one, I love it personally and second because (hypothetically) my clients from “xyz” domain needed ad campaigns & FB is best in that scenario. It resulted in a lot of exposure on the said platform. Then say, “Also Twitter because it’s easy to use, quick to create trends & gives better outcomes in viral campaign.” I have a fair idea of work on LinkedIn because of its limiting nature (recruitment & career option development); G + is the least because its only favored by companies for group making and SEO ranking.
# Remember it’s just an example. You can have different set of choices.
Q 9. How much SEO knowledge & experience you have?
A 9. Again TRICKY! If you are a blog writer, then you definitely have a fair idea about SEO, which is more than enough in most cases (if the profile is strictly Social Media Expert). Also, now a days there are blogging platforms like tumblr, Medium, etc. that have inbuilt SEO profiling. With well-defined KPIs and brand related content, the brand keywords are automatically fetched by & added into google’s metadata, resulting in improved ranking. Same is the case with twitter and Facebook (use of hashtags). So all of this, solves the purpose(SM platforms does half the SEO job for the brands). You can explain your fair exposure to SEO, analysis & execution part, and why you never needed to venture deep into SEO. However, you always use SEO as a deciding factor while making your #SocialMediaStrategy.
If you know SEO, then obviously problem solved. Explain how much you know with factual data.
#Remember the employer may ask you to show him/her a snippet of SEO work you have done as this is the only factual data that can be actually shown as a promising attribute of your work. So, be truthful.
Q 10. What are your Favorite social media blog sites?
A 10. With a lot of SM blog sites popping every day, even avid readers fail to keep a track on their social media information source. Therefore, list a few among many sites you follow and remember to reason it well.
E.g; You can say I like ScoopWhoop because it carries socially relevant information, is more close to a commoner’s daily life. Or you can also say that you simply follow the embedded blog posts that Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin has. That’s the whole pool of information from where you get your share.
Again, a question of personal choice. So tailor it according to you.
Q 11. Social Media Influencers you follow?
A 11. SM Influencers — the people who have proved their social media prowess by transforming big companies/brands into social media frenzies with their campaign creation & management. Knowingly or unknowing we follow certain people who have proven their dexterity in social media. Search and list out few to make an appropriate answer. Like most of the social media aspirants follow the work of Gary Vaynerchuk (The famous author & public speaker) and Ann Handley (for her digital content curation prowess). With thoughtleaders from big corps taking center on influencer space, you can add someone from a company like a CEO or Talent Aggregator you admire for his/her messages. Add a few who inspires you in that sense.
Q 12. Latest campaign you liked?
A 12. Give one good example of which campaign you liked, add reason with it and then make sure you add your comment on how it could have been better if you would have done it.
*Remember — Comment not Criticize.
