Employ the Digital world savvy
When it comes to technology, people either get it, or don’t. Just as someone is musically inclined, or artistic, people are tech savvy. Hire someone who has a passion for technology, because with the tech world, things are constantly changing and getting updated. What works today is old news tomorrow. Your hire should be someone who is constantly re-educating themselves on the new products, be the first to adopt new gadgets and social tools, and love it! I would recommend actually posting your job openings on Twitter and LinkedIn in order to look for talented individuals. I’ve hear about more and more new hires being found from Twitter everyday.
Employ an analytical mind
Long gone are the traditional methods of marketing where the marketers are left to wonder which methods of marketing are generating the best return on investment. The great thing about internet marketing is that everything is trackable. You can tell where all of your internet traffic is coming from, and where your sales conversions are coming from. It’s a necessity that you have your new hire be someone who can collect and interpret all of this data, and use it to make wise marketing decisions.
Employ a Web Presence Professional
You should be looking to hire an employee that already has a great web presence themselves. How are they going to help your business on the internet if they aren’t already using these tools themselves? Your potential hire should already be fairly active with online social networks like (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). This person is going to probably be in charge of growing and developing your company’s brand and social network, so make sure they are skilled at this. Check out your prospective hires online reputation and see how it stacks up. Online reputation is now more important than ever, so when searching for the best employee, you are going to want someone on your team who knows the value of great online reputation and can keep yours amazing as well. A great place to check is LinkedIn recommendations: Do they have previous happy clients, employers, co-workers? Has this person developed an online brand for themselves? If not, how are they help develop your company’s!
Employ a content publisher
Can your prospect write? Unique creative content is one of the biggest (and overlooked) factors involved in hiring a internet marketer. Creating new content that spreads through social networks, gains links back to your website, and is crawled and easily found by search engines is one of the most important ways to generate traffic, and ultimately create new customers. Does the prospective employee currently run any blogs? You had better hope so if you want viral and appealing content written for your business. This is one of the best ways to be found by new customers online, so be sure that this is second nature for your new hire.
Some possible questions to your prospective employee:
- Are you currently Blogging? Can you show me?
- Do you subscribe to any digital news? How do you keep your digital knowledge up to date?
- Explain Social Bookmarking and how it will help generate traffic to our website?
- How would you utilize Social Media to gain more traffic to our website?
- Explain how PageRank works.
- (Ahead of time) Please write and bring with you a 1,000 word unique article on “your industry”
- Why is a businesses online reputation important and how would you keep it highly regarded?
- Explain the benefits of Location Based Marketing
- What is a backlink and how would you go about generating more to our website?
- Are you familiar with Google Analytics? Can you show me how you currently use it?
