The Best 11 Questions to Ask a Social Media Consultant
There are many reasons why you might want to hire a social media consultant or freelancer for your business. Here are some effective questions that you should ask a prospective consultant to make sure they are the right fit for your brand.
- How Will You Reach Our Goals?
- How Would You Describe My Business?
- Can You Provide Examples of Successful Campaigns…?
- What Are the Best Platforms for My Brand?
- Which Brands Do You Believe Are Using Social Media Successfully?
- What is Your Approach to Creating Content…?
- How Will Your Ideas Build Relationships With Our Audience?
- How Do You Use Data to Assure Success?
- Who Are You as a Content Consumer?
- How Will You Leverage Our Brand Stories?
- How Do You Measure the Success of Social Media Campaigns?
How Will You Reach Our Goals?
A social media consultant may be an expert in their trade, but they may not completely understand what you want to gain if you hire them, so asking them how their efforts will help you reach your objective is critical.
It is important to understand that a social media consultant is there to help you reach your goals, but they may not always be clear on what those are, so it is important to make sure that you and the consultant are on the same page.
Whether your goal is to drive traffic to your website, generate email sign-ups, set up appointments, or incentivize downloads, asking how their plan will help you get the results you desire is critical to ensure they understand what you want from their efforts.
In addition, it can show areas in which you can support their strategy. By asking a social media consultant how they will reach your objectives, you can ensure they fully understand what you want in hiring them.
Ryan Rottman, Co-Founder and CEO, OSDB Sports
How Would You Describe My Business?
Ask them how they would describe where your business fits into your industry. This question serves several purposes.
It shows you how well the consultant understands your company, how well they know your industry, and what they see as your position in it. The right social media consultant for your brand will be someone whose answer shows they are well-versed in your field, have done their homework learning about your business, and can identify the strengths you want to be marketing.
Conversely, some consultants may have a very different opinion about your role in your niche than you do. This can be a sign that they’re the wrong consultant for you.
Brian Munce, Managing Director, Gestalt Brand Lab
Can You Provide Examples of Successful Campaigns…?
Can you provide examples of successful social media campaigns that you have executed for clients in a similar industry as ours? This question reveals several important things about the prospective consultant.
Industry knowledge: a social media consultant who has experience working with clients in a similar industry will have a better understanding of the industry trends, target audience, and best practices for social media marketing.
Results-oriented: By asking for examples of successful social media campaigns, clients can assess whether the consultant is results-oriented and has a track record of delivering positive outcomes for clients.
Creativity and innovation: The examples provided by the consultant can also reveal their level of creativity and innovation in developing social media campaigns that are unique and effective in capturing the attention of the target audience.
Jason Moss, President and Co-Founder, Moss Technologies
What Are the Best Platforms for My Brand?
This question will enable you to understand whether the consultant has experience in your niche. Further, it will outline the consultant’s competence for matching brand strategy and target audience with suitable social media platforms. The evaluation of the choices will show you the extent of experience this person has, and whether it matches the needs and vision of your company.
Marco Genaro Palma, Co-Founder, TechNews180
Which Brands Do You Believe Are Using Social Media Successfully?
This question alone will gauge the consultant’s creativity, pulse of emerging trends, ideas for organic growth, how in touch they are with competitors, and what key performance indicators they use to determine success. It’s important to remember that social media covers a range of platforms, so be sure to specify which platform you’re most interested in for growth.
Angie Chavez, Social Media Consultant, Self-Employed
What is Your Approach to Creating Content…?
What is your approach to creating social media content, and how do you tailor it to our brand and audience? This is the cornerstone question that will help you understand if the consultant understands that social media channels are an extension of an overarching go-to-market strategy.
Social media content should not live in a silo but should help prospective customers learn and build trust with your brand. You should listen to the consultant’s process for learning about your narrative, brand messaging, and positioning in the marketplace. You will also want to learn about their creative process and how they will ensure they tailor the content to resonate with your audience and achieve your goals.
Paul Slack, CEO, Vende Digital
How Will Your Ideas Build Relationships With Our Audience?
This question should reveal whether the social media consultant is familiar with the concept of relationship-building and engagement with their client’s target audience. This is important because it shows that the consultant is focused on creating meaningful connections and conversations with followers, rather than just broadcasting promotional messages.
A good consultant should be able to explain how their ideas will help the company build relationships with its target audience, and create conversations that will strengthen their brand. They should also be able to provide specific ideas and strategies that will help the company achieve their goals. It’s also important to know that the consultant is up-to-date with the latest trends in social media and can develop creative strategies to engage with their audience.
Tomas Panik, Founder, EaseSpark
How Do You Use Data to Assure Success?
Marketing is not a science, but relying on intuition-based assumptions is outdated when dealing with digital channels such as social media. When hiring a new consultant, it is important to get a feel for how broad their understanding of data is, and not just for selecting the correct KPIs to measure the success of your campaigns.
They need to have a grasp of the whole digital ecosystem to know when to use social listening and when to work with other teams in the department to exchange information that will help optimize your social strategy.
Analytical thinking and data-driven marketing help to make informed decisions. Understanding that is a must for every successful social media consultant in order to be able to keep up with the fast pace of change we see in this line of work.
Ieva Vaitiekunaite, Founder, Raffish Agency
Who Are You as a Content Consumer?
Creation and consumption. We often see these two words as antipodal, which I argue instead exist in a state of symbiotic dichotomy.
The role of a social media consultant is not only that of providing assistance with the creation and filtering of content, but also to provide a knowledgeable link between the mindsets of the content creator and the consumers which they are striving to reach and connect with.
Content creators are human, and with that comes inherent biases that they may or may not be aware of. Having a social media consultant who is like-minded to the creator has the potential to create an echo chamber effect, whereas if the consultant has experience as a consumer in the creator’s target niche they will be better able to provide direction and balance out the perspective of the creator.
To take your brand to the next level, the goal is to find someone with complimentary views and a different perspective. Ensure you are doing this by first asking, “Who are you as a content consumer?”
Anthony Dorazio, Social Media Consultant, Private Social Media Consultancy
How Will You Leverage Our Brand Stories?
When interviewing prospective social media consultants, ask how they plan to uncover and share your most compelling brand stories in ways that powerfully connect with your existing audience and reach new audiences.
Good social media posts aren’t just product or service promotions; they tell memorable stories that connect with people on an emotional level rather than just spewing facts and figures. So, finding someone who can uncover and leverage your brand stories to increase the “know, like, and trust” factor that makes people want to buy from you and engage with your brand is crucial.
Laura Ferreiro, Founder and CEO, Story Harmony
How Do You Measure the Success of Social Media Campaigns?
The impact of social media marketing is often very hard to measure. Many have abandoned measurement altogether, but just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
As with all marketing tactics, there needs to be a strategy that drives all efforts and an expectation that we can derive a result from that. The narrative within the marketing industry is veering back to brand building.
Brand building is a worthwhile pursuit, but whatever your specific goal for social media is for your brand, ask your consultant how they plan to measure their impact and progress toward that goal. This will give you insight into how they view social media, its value, data, and give you a sign of how sophisticated they are as marketers.
Barend Potgieter, Digital Strategist, Content King
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