What qualifies someone to be a social media manager? How does one go from being the host of their personal accounts to the manager of multiple brand accounts?
Yesterday, my team and I were on a conference call organized by one of my clients. You see, my client has a coach, and this coach works with "social media consultants" and said the consultants had some "suggestions" for my client's account that they wanted to talk with us about. I'm sure you can imagine what happened next. These two consultants attempted to play stump the chump with my staff in an effort to show that they knew something we didn't. (Because they want my client to be their client).
As I tried to keep my cool, we listened to their suggestions and gave them the methodology for why we did things the way we did them (for instance, not using hashtags on Facebook unless we were talking about a trending topic, when they wanted us to load up our client's posts with hashtags. I've got a hashtag for them - #nothappening). But then, oh then, they really got frisky. They said that the information posted on her Facebook business page would be indexed by Google and show in Google search results. Please now imagine the sound of screeching tires.
When I told them that wasn't the case they said, "Well, it's coming." As if they were privy to some secret squirrel information. I'm thinking to myself, am I in the twilight zone? In what world would Google index post content from Facebook when they clearly compete for ad revenue. Imagine if this were to happen? People could post on their business pages on Facebook for free and as a result come up ranking higher in Google Search? Um, never going to happen.
I was so disturbed by this mis-information I got up this morning and did a little research - check this out:
While this Google Rep doesn't come out and talk about the revenue implications, he makes other interesting points for why Google isn't indexing Twitter and Facebook.
So here's what I want you to know -
There is no degree in social media for marketing (but there should be).
The young kid you hired who used social media to talk to his friends doesn't understand how it all works together (or doesn’t work together) to grow your business.
The "consultants" that claim to have all the answers may, or may not have any answers. Just like going to a doctor, please get a second and third opinion always, especially if you don't have knowledge in this arena.
Yes, you can do this on your own, if you have the time, but you're going to pay in some way - be it with your time or your money and if you do it yourself, you'll have to get educated. These platforms change all of the time and there is always someone a few steps ahead of you, if this isn't what you do every day.
Good luck and if you end up talking with social media consultants and what you're hearing sounds like gibberish, don't assume they know more than you do.
Trust your instincts.
Whomever you work with should be able to explain this process in a way you are able to understand not only what they are going to be doing but what the benefit is to you in the end.