The traditional measures of service quality — brand loyalty and sales figures — are still vital to the success of a business, but new and valuable technology-related information is available through social media platforms.

How can companies gather that information, and more importantly, how can they interpret that data to determine strategies?

Enter the social media analyst, a marketing role that is becoming key to brand building and customer service. Often part of the business marketing area, social media analysts mine accounts such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn and Instagram for comments about their companies and seek to apply that information to business practices.

Factors to consider when hiring a social media analyst

In today’s competitive business landscape, establishing a robust social media presence is imperative for marketing products and services across all industries and organizational mandates. Official company social media accounts have become a personal and direct avenue for customer engagement.

Social media analysts play a pivotal role in this area as they are entrusted with the expertise to navigate a multitude of social media platforms. Collaborating with senior management, advertising executives, department heads and various stakeholders, social media analysts establish, coordinate and carry out branding, marketing and advertising campaigns using these platforms. Social media campaigns often constitute the initial and primary point of contact between the organization and its customers. Hence, clarity, consistency and compelling messaging are non-negotiable.

Hiring the ideal social media analyst doesn’t have to be a complicated process.

You need to think about the right salary, personality traits and skillsets, the job description, duties and responsibilities, desired competencies and experience, interview questions and even a job advertisement.

For example, social media analysts help steer the social media strategies of companies, so knowledge of, and potentially a degree in, marketing is essential. Data analytics skills are also becoming increasingly important.

Finding the ideal social media analyst

All those aforementioned factors will take time to research. It will also be quite a task to come up with the right questions to ask a person in an interview.

Luckily, TechRepublic Premium has created a customizable hiring kit.

For instance, in the kit, it points out that candidates who can demonstrate their proficiency in mitigating warranted or unwarranted negative sentiment on social media should be of particular interest. Swiftly monitoring and countering negative feedback is essential in the fast-changing social media landscape.

The hiring kit also dives deep into asking potential candidates about strategies they employ to keep updated with social media tools and trends and get them to describe a project under significant deadline pressure.

Whether your company agrees with that analysis is a moot point. The beauty of the kit is that it can be altered as you see fit.

If all this is of interest, you can download the 16-page hiring kit for $19 at TechRepublic Premium.