Social media is a very important channel for companies to communicate in. We’re not going to rehash all of the big numbers showing how important Facebook is or all of the celebrities using Twitter. We do believe it’s a large communication medium where you can reach a large number of potential customers. There are companies making money on social media and if you’re in the market for a social media manager or a social media specialist, these interview questions will help you find the right candidate.
We’re not proposing using all of these questions with a candidate, you can pick and choose, but we wanted to give you enough breadth of questions that you could find the right ones for your interview process. If you’re seeking a job as a social media specialist, these questions will help you prepare for the job interview.
Social Media Job Interview Questions
General Social Media Questions
These are general social media questions for you to determine a level of knowledge from the candidate regarding social media and social networking.
- What are some of the challenges explaining social media to non-technical executives? How do you overcome objections about social media?
- If you were working at a firm which blocked employee access to Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites, do you think this is a good policy? If not, how would you convince the executive team to open up access for employees?
- What is the difference between moderating something and facilitating something?
- What are your strengths in social media?
- What are your weaknesses in social media?
- Which social bookmarking sites do you use?
- What social media tools do you use?
- What is your biggest mistake you’ve made in social media? How did you fix it?
- Have you ever held a live event in the social space? How would you market a live online event? How would you structure the event?
- How do you manage an online reputation? If one of our executives had a bad online reputation (bad press, etc) and wanted to fix it, what would you recommend?
- If we had a business crisis, what social media channels would you use to communicate through? How would you manage the messaging?
- What areas of social media would you recommend outsourcing?
- What are the risks with becoming involved in social media?
- Which is the best social check-in site?
- Are you the mayor of any place?
- What do you do offline to increase your online knowledge? (Hat tip: Brian Boyd)
Social Media Industry Questions
In this section of the interview, you will learn how involved the candidate is in the industry. Is he/she looking for a job or a career?
- What is Web 2.0?
- What does Web 3.0 look like?
- What’s the “next big thing?”
- What is the difference between social media and social networking?
- What do you think of social media consultants?
- What’s the scariest part of social media?
- What’s the most exciting part of social media?
- What social media blogs do you read? What research do you follow?
- Who’s your favorite social media expert?
Social Media Technical Questions
How much of the underlying social media technology does the candidate understand? These questions determine the level of technical knowledge of the candidate.
- Explain the difference between Facebook Like and Sharing on Facebook.
- If you’re planning a vacation and will be out of touch and not able to get online for a week, what tools would you use to ensure social media updates are being posted?
- Write three headlines for news stories that you think will have tremendous success on social media. What makes the headline successful? Write a headline for a successful article about our company.
- How often should we update Twitter?
- How do you handle criticism of a company online?
- What would you do if someone started a parody account poking fun at our company?
- What is your policy for moderating comments?
- Would you pay a blogger to write favorably about our company?
- How would you show unique content only to fans on our Facebook page?
- Who in our organization should be blogging on behalf of the company?
- What is a “sneezer”?
- How would you perform competitive analysis in the social space?
- What do think about software applications that autofollow or try to get get large masses of friends on social network sites?
- What do the statistics look like for a healthy Facebook fan page?
- Explain what a retweet is.
- What is RSS? Why is it important?
- Have you ever gotten a piece of content onto the front page of Digg?
- How frequently do you update Facebook and Twitter?
Social Media Analytics & Marketing Questions
A good portion of social media is marketing related. Does the candidate understand these marketing elements and the tactics necessary to apply them to social media?
- How do you measure success on social media?
- What metrics do you use to measure the effectiveness of social media?
- How would you tell that a social media campaign has failed?
- What key performance indicators would you recommend to report on social media efforts?
- Write down a table of contents for a social media strategy.
- What elements should go into a social media marketing plan?
- Why would we want to pay for social media advertising?
- What are the best types of things to advertise on a social networking site?
- What analytics software packages have you used?
- Describe the most successful social media campaign you have ever seen. What made it so successful? Could you duplicate that level of success?
- Describe a social media campaign you ran from start to finish.
- Provide an example of a social media campaign you are current running. Show me what channels it is in. Describe the next steps for your campaign.
- What are the elements that make a video go viral?
Our Company
How will the candidate use social media for the company? Has the candidate reviewed the company’s current social media presence and formed an opinion?
- For our business, would Twitter or Facebook be more effective?
- Why would we want to continue using MySpace?
- Why should we use social media?
- What would be the first thing you would do if hired for this position? What would your goal be for the first month? The first year?
- Would you use Facebook Like or Facebook Recommend on our site?
- What social sites should our company have a presence on?
- How would you integrate social media into our site? What buttons or widgets would you recommend?
- What percentage of our referral traffic would you think our site should get from social media sites?
- Give our company a grade on our current social media efforts.
- How would a social check in site benefit our business?
- What tabs should we have on our company Facebook page? Which one should be default?
- How do you define social media reach? What is the current social media reach our of our company?
- What are 5 things you would recommend to us to do immediately in the social space?
What Questions Do You Recommend?
What are other questions for a social media job candidate? Leave your questions or answers to these questions in the comments below.
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