How to hire a Social Media Strategist in 2024

There are 25 qualities your company should consider when hiring 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 directly at an agency, for the company, or as a freelancer. Regardless, your social media coordinator must be able to fulfil all your company's needs. 

We've created a list of 25 essential qualities to look for when hiring a social media strategist:

1. Social Media Experience
If you're going to hire someone to manage 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 and be proficient in analysing data and trends.

2. Writing Skills
A social media strategist needs to be able to write compelling copy for posts, including grammar and spelling skills. They also must know how to write in a voice that best relates to their 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 your company's needs, design experience can range from Canva graphics to original designs on InDesign or Illustrator. For this individual to run your social media, they must 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 excellent customer service skills to interact with potential customers. They need to understand how your company would act/sound in customer service situations.

5. Organisation Skills
You need a social media strategist with excellent organisational skills to draft and schedule posts efficiently. A productive social media strategist can handle multiple projects at once, effectively visualise stories or posts, and develop different posts to portray a story accurately. Essentially, they need to be able to organise a vast amount of folders with other 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 tells consumers, and your company's post agenda. It's better to hire someone with experience as they deal with your budget.

7. Industry Knowledge or Interest
Your social media strategist will create posts to effectively communicate with your target audience, so they must know about your company's industry and understand how it 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
Your social media manager needs to be able to communicate with your company's employees to create company posts. They can ask questions about what certain individuals do or how something works to generate posts.

9. Creativity
A noticeable quality you want your social media strategist to have is creativity. If this person is in charge of social media, you'll like them to be able to think outside the box with ideas, both strategically and visually.

10. Efficiency 
Your social media manager will take on many different tasks within their position, so you want them to be efficient throughout the process.

11. Project Management
Your strategist must be able to manage and see a social media campaign through. This requires communication, coordination, and patience, especially when other employees are involved.

12. Marketing Strategy
To see results, such as an increase in following or visibility, your social media manager must have previous experience in marketing and overall strategy.

13. Audience Research
It's also essential that your strategist has previous audience research experience and understands how to target a specific audience. You don't want them to waste resources, gaining the attention of individuals outside your target audience. Instead, you want them to be specific to your audience's needs, improve your content scheduling, increase the effectiveness of your posts, and incorporate appropriate CTAs.

14. Agility
Your social media manager will often need to think and act quickly. In this position, they may encounter unhappy customers and unexpected backlash, so they'll need to act accordingly.

15. Data Analysis
To study analytics and determine if paid and organic efforts have impacted 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 want them to be creative and innovative. You want your social media strategist to develop new ideas for campaigns and/or marketing products to increase 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, they must 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 as visible as possible. SEO also helps you optimise your profiles to attract more followers.

20. Storyteller
Your social media strategist needs to be a good storyteller. This characteristic is essential for writing audience-engaging captions and accurately portraying your company's work culture.

21. Trendspotter
Your social media specialist needs 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 essential for your specialist to be able to create trending and new memes. Let's face it—memes have been around for a while, and they aren't going anywhere. They also have really engaging content and help increase the odds of followers sharing the post, boosting your company's visibility.

We shouldn't have to be the ones to tell you that humour is an essential trait for your company's social media strategist to have. If they don't have a sense of humour or the ability to write witty copy, they most likely 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 spent on something other than social media.

24. Risk taker
If your social media specialist is not bold enough to take risks, your company's page will never grow. To grow your social media visibility, engagement, and followers, your strategist must 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, hiring a social media specialist who is audience-focused in their goals and content is essential. After all, there's no point in creating content if it doesn't resonate with your target audience!

At DIFY, we understand the challenges of recruiting top talent in the digital marketing landscape. Our extensive network and proven recruitment process can streamline your search and connect you with qualified social media strategists with the perfect blend of creativity, data analysis, and audience focus.

Stop wasting time shifting through resumes.

Contact enquiries@dify.sg today, and let us be your partner in building a high-performing social media team!