Navigating the social media world in today’s business environment can be a tall task for many companies. There are many reasons businesses refuse to get more involved in the social media marketing landscape. The truth of the matter is, the longer you put off your social media marketing then the worse off you are going to be in the long run. Everyone that has ever been a part of any company knows one of the biggest advantages your company can gain is reaching the consumer before the competitor. Social media has made it extremely easy to reach your exact target market, so the key is to get to them before the competition does. If you are a company that has not yet taken advantage of the social media marketing opportunity it may be time to give social media another look as a plausible revenue generator. If your company is shopping around for a marketing firm to manage social media accounts look at these 4 items to make sure you are going with a company that knows what they are doing. With so many self-proclaimed “social media experts” it can be tricky to separate the pretenders from the contenders especially if you have little to no experience.

• Look at the social media presence of the company you are going to hire

This is my favorite indicator to use to separate the pretenders from the contenders. Look at the company’s social media presence to see what their activity is like. Checkout their Facebook page, their Twitter account, LinkedIn profile, etc .etc. chances are if their last company update was in 2010 than they won’t be the ideal company to be updating your organizations social accounts either.  If they can’t do it for their own company, how are they going to do it for yours?

• Make sure the company has a good reputation

Visit their website and get some references to talk with. If they have any clientele listed on the website give them a call and talk to them about their success, failures, and everything in between. This is a more effective route then asking for references because what company is going to give you a reference to company that isn’t currently happy?

• Ask the company if they would ever tweet about controversial topics

In my personal opinion there is nothing worse than the social media management company that is trying to push their political ideology onto others at the expense of their clients. Believe it or not this actually happens all the time in the social media world. Ask the company you are interviewing how they feel about political or religious updates. The general rule of thumb in social media management is if it’s controversial in any way then stay away from the topic as a whole. If you are interviewing a company that has high praise for a group like Westboro Baptist Church hopefully that will raise the red flag to you/the decision maker.

• Make sure the company has some sort of history/ track record with social media marketing

Hiring the social media Management Company with less than one year experience may never be a good idea. Get a feel for how long the company has been involved in social media. If they just opened up their social media marketing services last week then it may be wise to continue to look for a firm with a concrete history in social media management. Typically anything over 3 years is acceptable and companies with over 5 years of experience are phenomenal.

Hopefully this article will help your organization find a good social media marketing company to work with. These are just a few basic items to consider when hiring a company. If you would like to know more about social media management and what to look for when working with social media managers feel free to email us at Caleb@mktg4thefuture.com. If you have any specific indicators you look at when shopping around for a social media campaign manager let us know about them in the comments section below!