Social Media Marketing is a rapidly evolving practice. And to the extent it evolves, the more we sometime need help and assistance.
Just recently, I have been receiving a bevy of calls from clients and proprietor friends asking me about what criteria they should use when hiring a "computer guy" to help them with their social media stuff.
So i thought i would get to a bunch of my resources and develop a quick criteria for you
When you go out to recruit a vendor, realize that while the capabilities of each are very similar,
the service element can vary wildly from vendor to vendor.
It pays to take extra time in the evaluation process to determine what kind of service the vendor “really” offers, and what you are getting with your particular package. Naturally, a “premium” package will usually offer more customer support. That can be a worthwhile investment.
Don’t hesitate to ask vendors for references to ascertain what the service and support experience is actually all about. And to the extent possible, it is extremely useful to find your own independent reference of someone who has used that particular SMM platform.
For each of the following criteria, ask yourself if the solution offered by the vendor you are speaking to address and answer that need.
Also on the left side of these questions write down: "Must Have" or "Like To have" next to the item. If you have to compromise, then compromise on the "likes", not on the "musts".
PAGE MANAGEMENT
q Comprehensive page design and publishing tools
q Publishing to multiple social properties and networks
q Pre-built, customizable page templates
q Ability to create custom templates that can be shared across the enterprise
q Ability to lock down template components to ensure consistent branding
q Flexibility to build fully custom pages from scratch
q Plug-ins for apps and pre-built engagement content (e.g., fan-gated contests, polls, quizzes, etc.)
q Real-time page performance tracking and analytics
MESSAGING MANAGEMENT
q Comprehensive messaging management tools
q Cascading permissions and work flow for message handling and publishing
q Message scheduling and automated posting
q Publishing of messages to multiple social properties and networks
q Unified social message inbox
q Keyword filtering and flagging (e.g., for profanity)
q Real-time message tracking and analytics
PROMOTION MANAGEMENT
q Comprehensive promotion publishing and management tools
q Pre-built promotion campaign templates optimized to drive entry and engagement
q Support for wide variety of promotion types (e.g., contests, coupons, sweepstakes, pick a favorite,
quizzes, trivia, etc.)
q Real-time promotion tracking and analytics
SOCIAL ADVERTISING MANAGEMENT
q Social advertising planning, purchasing, management, and optimization
q Automated multivariate testing of advertising creative content (i.e., thousands of ad variations)
q Ability to optimize ad cost, clicks, and post-click engagement
q Advertising across multiple social networks
q Real-time ad performance tracking and analytics, including post-click engagement activity
SOCIAL DATA MANAGEMENT
q Capture and aggregation of consumer social data in a unified repository
q Retrieval of complete history of consumer interactions on brand Facebook wall
q Custom segmentation of social audience data
q Analysis of consumer interests
q Targeting based on consumer interests
MOBILE SUPPORT
q Native support for mobile content and devices
q Auto-optimized content for any display (design content once and deploy to any device)
You may very well have more criteria or want to modify this list, but use it as a start when hiring a vendor.
And as always, if you have a question or need some information, don't hesitate to call me @ 516 359 4874
And as always, if you have a question or need some information, don't hesitate to call me @ 516 359 4874
