How to hire a social media strategist in 2024

There are 25 qualities your company should consider when looking to hire a social media manager.

A social media strategist is an individual who creates quality content designed for specific social media platforms based on research and analytics. This individual can work at an agency, for the company directly, or as a freelancer. Regardless, your social media coordinator must have the ability to fulfill all your company’s needs. We’ve created a list of 25 essential qualities to look for when hiring a social media strategist:

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1. Social Media Experience

If you’re going to hire someone to do your company’s social media, we recommend hiring a candidate with previous social media experience. A desirable candidate will have proficient experience with InDesign, Canva, and Illustrator, as well as proficiency in analyzing data and trends.

2. Writing Skills

A social media strategist needs to be able to write effective copy for posts, which includes skills in grammar and spelling. They also must know how to write in a voice that best relates to your audience — ask a candidate for their portfolio to see if their past work resembles what you’re aiming for with your company.

3. Design Skills

Depending on what your company needs, design experience can range from Canva graphics to original design on InDesign or Illustrator. In order for this individual to run your social media, it's important that they at least have an idea of what goes into creating the graphics and content that will be posted to your company’s account. 

4. Customer Service Skills

A social media strategist must also have great customer service skills to interact with potential customers. They need to understand how your company as a whole would act/sound in customer service situations.

5. Organization Skills

To draft and schedule posts efficiently, you need a social media strategist with great organizational skills. A productive social media strategist will be able to handle multiple projects at once, effectively visualize stories or posts, and develop different posts to portray a story accurately. Essentially, they need to be able to organize a vast amount of folders with different content, promoting different company events and accomplishments efficiently!

6. Paid Traffic Experience

Your social media manager will need to boost some of your social media posts by understanding your target audience, what your content is telling consumers, and what your company’s agenda for the post is. It’s better to hire an individual who has experience in this as they are dealing with your budget.

7. Industry Knowledge or Interest 

Your social media strategist will be creating posts to effectively communicate to your target audience, so it’s important they have knowledge about your company’s industry and understand how your company works. We recommend looking for someone with experience in your industry or who has acquired a major or minor in an area related to your industry. 

8. Communication Skills

To create company posts, your social media manager needs to be able to communicate with employees of your company. They can ask questions about what certain individuals do or how something works to generate posts.

9. Creativity

An obvious quality you want your social media strategist to have is creativity. If this person is in charge of social media, you’ll want them to be able to think outside the box with ideas — strategically and visually.

10. Efficiency 

Your social media manager is going to take on many different tasks within their position, so you want them to be efficient through each part of the process.

11. Project Management

Your strategist must be able to manage and see a social media campaign through. This takes communication, coordination, and patience, especially when other employees are involved in the campaign.

12. Marketing Strategy

To see results, such as an increase in following or visibility, it’s important your social media manager has previous experience in marketing and overall strategy. 

13. Audience Research

It’s also important that your strategist has previous audience research experience and understands how to target a specific audience. You don’t want them to waste resources to gain the attention of individuals not within your target audience. Instead, you want them to be specific to your audience’s needs, improve your content scheduling, improve the effectiveness of your posts, and incorporate appropriate CTAs. 

14. Agility

Your social media manager will often need to think and act quickly. Within this position, they will encounter unhappy customers and unexpected backlash at times, so they’ll need to act accordingly.

15. Data Analysis

To study analytics and determine if paid and organic efforts have made an impact on the social media channel, your strategist must be able to read and digest data through metrics such as reach, followers, likes, views, and more.

16. Budget Management

Along with paid media experience, you might also want your social media manager to have budget management experience. They will work closely with your budget for external resources to help create, schedule, post, and boost social media posts. 

17. Innovation

You not only want them to be creative but also innovative. You want your social media strategist to come up with new ideas for campaigns and/or marketing products that will result in an increase in sales.

18. Attention to Detail

This is a crucial quality for a social media manager to have. Between spell-checking posts and captions and looking for visual inconsistencies between posts, it’s important they catch any little detail or mistake before the post goes live.

19. Social Media SEO Experience

Previous experience in SEO means your social media manager will understand the importance of using keywords, phrases, and certain hashtags to make your posts the most visible they can be. SEO also helps you optimize your profiles to attract more followers. 

20. Storyteller

Your social media strategist needs to be a good storyteller. This characteristic is important to write audience-engaging captions and accurately portray your company’s work culture.

21. Trendspotter

It’s important for your social media specialist to be able to spot trends early and adapt them to fit your company’s goals. Being on top of trends is how you can create engaging and relevant content.

22. Meme curator

It’s also important for your specialist to be able to create trending and new memes. Let’s face it. Means have been around for a while, and they aren’t going anywhere. They are also really engaging content and help increase the odds of followers sharing the post, boosting your company’s visibility.

23. Humourous

We shouldn’t have to be the ones to tell you that having humor is an important trait for your company’s social media strategist to have. If they don’t have a sense of humor or the ability to write witty copy, then most likely they won’t be able to produce engaging content for your target audience. There’s a time and place for a serious tone but 90% of that time is NOT on social media. 

24. Risk taker

If your social media specialist is too afraid to take risks, then your company’s page will never grow. In order to grow your social media visibility, engagement, and followers, your strategist will need to create content that pushes some limits and take risks with boosting posts. If you always play it safe, you won’t see the results of someone taking risks.

25. Audience-focused

Lastly, it’s important to hire a social media specialist who is audience-focused in their goals and content. After all, there’s no point in creating content if it’s not resonating with your target audience!

Finding the right social media strategist for your company can be challenging. To help with your social media strategy, check out our The Essential Social Media Management Guide E-Book. We also offer social media services if you want to bypass the intense hunt for the perfect social media strategist.

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