Monday we started this series with What to consider before hiring for social media, and today we’re continuing with 10 Things to Look For in a social media based employee. On Friday we’ll end the series with 10 Thing to Avoid.

When looking for a social media based employee you really want to get someone who understands it all. You want someone who understands what’s going on and know why the company should be involved beyond “because everyone else is”. You need someone who knows that there is more to it than just Facebook and Twitter, and understands how it all plays into the company’s image and it’s goals.

Here’s a list of 10 attributes that most social media applicants should have. Now of course the attributes you’re looking for in someone might change a little based on your niche, your company, and your individual goals, but overall these should apply to anyone you want who’s not just managing, pushing, and updating content.

Active
This one should be obvious, but make sure they are very active in the space and use it for more than just playing around with their friends. There is a huge difference between having a Facebook page and being an active member of the online community. Do they blog? Do they use Twitter? Do they have a LinkedIn account? What kind of things do they talk about on them? What information do they share?

Results driven
Unless you just want someone to manage your content and push out stuff then you need someone who is going to be looking at the bigger picture. How social media plays into the company goals, how to get there, and is concerned with making things work and customer engagement.

Knowledgeable
Just because someone has a Twitter account doesn’t mean they know how to use it for business purposes. Have they done it before? Do they run a blog and talk about it on there? Are they involved in any groups? Check to see if they have the knowledge necessary to be an asset.

Written communication skills
The vast majority of communication online is typed so checking this is crucial. Do they have horrendous grammar? Do they have trouble expressing themselves in a written format? Send them an email or two and see what their response is. Is it quick and to the point, or do they ramble on meaninglessly?

Customer service & people skills
The lines between PR, marketing, customer service, etc. are beginning to blur. Check for their people skills, their ability to work with angry customers and resolve issues. They need to be able to handle these situations and keep a good face when doing it.

Strategic Thinking
Do they just sit down and say “You guys need to be on Twitter and Facebook” but don’t have a good reason why? If so, move on. You need someone who can see the strategy behind social media and how it applies to your specific business and integrates with your other marketing, customer service, pr, sale, etc. efforts.

Motivation
A lot of social media is going to be self start mixed with some experimentation. They need to be proactive and search, listen, build plans, react and help grow the business in that area. If they just sit around and wait to be told what to do then how will you ever see the results you’re looking for?

Curiosity
This doesn’t mean that they have to be on the bleeding edge of every new social technology out there, but they should be trying things out. Testing and experimenting with new technologies is how they’ll know if something is a right fit for the company and how they’ll discover better ways of doing things.

Connected
Are they connected to only their friends, family, and maybe former employers online? Or are they out there connecting with people outside of their specific sphere? How have they built their online relationships? If they haven’t worked on building their own personal networks outside of their “comfort zone” how can you expect them to do the same for you?

Hard Working
A good indicator is what they do in their free time. Do they work on projects, write ebooks, author  a blog, build houses for the homeless, volunteer at a shelter, run a book club, do something other than just watch TV & play video games? Anything that shows they are a hard worker outside of work is usually a good sign that they will work hard for your company while at work.

What do you think of these initial 10? Do you think there are other qualities you should look for in employees when hiring for social media? Love to hear what you have to say in the comments below.

This is #2 in a series of 3, so be sure to bookmark the blog, or even better subscribe to the blog via RSS or email (top left of the blog) to ensure you get these and future posts, and I”ll see you in 2 days.

Thank you for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

Josh “Shua” Peters is the co-author of TwittFaced, a freelance internet marketer and trainer (with a heavy focus on social media) who has worked with companies of all sizes from Fortune 500 to non profits, single owner businesses, and everything in between. He blogs at Shuaism and can be regularly found on Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn.

image by That Canadian Grrl

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Recently I wrote a short piece about hiring for social media for the SMCSLC, and with 85% of US companies looking to increase their spend on social media this year you can see why it’s such a hot topic right now. Many companies are currently figuring out how to find quality people because the right person will make or break your social media implementation and usage.

You need the right person with the right knowledge, the right skill set, and very important, the right personality. Since social media is all about the interaction and connections having someone with a personality that fits your company and will shine in their interactions is now incredibly important.

When you’re getting ready to hire someone to handle your social media you need to ask yourself a question. Do you want to hire someone to just simply manage content & hope for some kind of results or do you want to hire a dynamic and knowledgeable person who is going to work on your company’s social media both inside and outside of the company? The first one has “Intern job” written all over it and has a low chance of seeing much success. The second option has “professional” written on it and has a greater chance of having real success.

At first it might seem like a daunting task because you may not know exactly what to look for, especially when it seems like everyone with a Twitter account and Facebook page is a “social media expert”. I’m here to tell you that unless they have the “experience” part of the expert down they aren’t. There is a lot of noise online and unfortunately it’s always going to be like that. Especially in the fields of emerging technology there always has been and always will be a little bit of trouble sifting through the noise. However, with a few guidelines you’ll be able to pull the wheat from the chaff with a fair amount of ease.

First is that there is no governing force out there that is certifying people in social media, so don’t fall for it. If you see that they are a “certified” social media expert, strategist, consultant, communicator, etc. don’t take that as being anything special. It’s not. Just because someone paid some unaccredited group a hefty sum to give them a certificate doesn’t mean they know anything at all.

When certifications will start to matter is when they get involved with major academic or professional institutions, like what the University of San Francisco or Full Sail University (which is affiliated with USF) are doing with the internet marketing certifications. If the certification comes from some random group that seems to have just “sprung up” then it’s no different than someone just making it up.

Second, just because they have profiles online doesn’t mean they know how to use them properly or for business. Look at their entire presence online and see what they do and say. If you take a good look you can see what they are all about and what they really know.

I’ve worked with Fortune 500 companies, single owner businesses, non-profits, and everything in between. I’ve helped manage social and internet marketing campaigns that dealt with hiring agencies and people to work on various aspects, I’m a published author on the subject of social media (TwittFaced) and I’m here to help. It’s not just what I do, but it’s what I love to do.

I’ve put together a list of 10 things to look for and 10 things to avoid to get you started, and on each I would love your feedback and to have you add to the lists. This space is changing all the time and we are all discovering together, and this is one of those instances where we can all learn more together.

The next 2 posts will serve as a guideline to help steer you in the right direction so be sure to bookmark the main site, or even better subscribe to the blog via RSS or email (top left) to ensure you get these and future posts.

Thank you for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

Josh “Shua” Peters is the co-author of TwittFaced, a freelance internet marketer and trainer (with a heavy focus on social media) who has worked with companies of all sizes from Fortune 500 to non profits, single owner businesses, and everything in between. He blogs at Shuaism and can be regularly found on Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn.

image by sanberdoo

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In today’s Salt Lake Tribune, Utah Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, “predicted [ethics] would be central on this year’s [legislative] agenda.”

Yet read this from Wina Sturgeon’s January Utah CEO report:

Many Utahns think one of the top subjects that will be discussed in the 2010 session is ethics reform. But when asked about that, Waddoups says, “Heavens no, that’s not even in the top five!”

Sturgeon continued:

Yet despite the Senator’s blithe dismissal of the ethics question, voters have made it clear that they are fed up with the current state of legislative ethics — or the lack of them — and want definite, more thorough, ethical reform. Utah ranks near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to our national ethics grade. There’s no independent review council, legislators police themselves. Not surprisingly, no lawmaker has ever been found guilty of an ethical lapse. The problem is not that legislative members violate the rules; the problem is that there are no rules. But this year, the subject of ethics won’t be easy to ignore, despite many other pressing matters. The voting public has made it clear that they want definite standards — rules — about such issues as what Utah lawmakers are allowed to do with leftover campaign funds and how long a member must wait before becoming a lobbyist.

Read more of Sturgeon’s reporting on Utah’s legislative ethics here.

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Thanks to Bill Cutting, partner and director of brand strategy at TWIO Brand, for granting us permission to repost the following entry from the TWIO Brand Blog.

In the dark ages of advertising (read: before the Internet), measuring ROI was a relatively straightforward matter.  You tallied your ad spend against your sales gain/loss, or rise/fall in market share.  Depending on your read of the results, you either won or lost. And you responded accordingly.  All of which produced the classic CEO’s dilemma: “Half of my advertising dollars are wasted; I just can’t tell which half.”

Fast-forward to 2010, and it’s not even about the Internet anymore, but it’s now about the phenomenon known as social media.  From out of literally nowhere, spending in this category (non-existent just five years ago) is projected by Forrester Research to grab 21 percent of all ad spending by 2012.

Did you say 21 percent?

Yep.  And all based on the premise that the average attention span of a human being has shrunk to the equivalent of the length of a flea’s back leg.  But I digress.

If advertising effectiveness measurement was difficult when there was just print and broadcast, consider how challenging it is today. Not only has it fragmented beyond recognition, but also that fragmentation is evolving even as we speak.  In other words, the tools created to measure website traffic less than a decade ago are now old hat. Today’s tools are being designed-on the fly-to measure the effectiveness of such phenomenon as mobile marketing, social media, email marketing, display advertising, search marketing… and each of those categories have many divisions of their own.  Even those “media” continue to evolve at a breathtaking pace.  The good news is that new measurement techniques and technologies to address this data gap represent a huge market opportunity for firms willing to wade into the morass.  A recent whitepaper released by the data firm CoreMetrics presents a good example—if you can decipher the buzzwords. But here’s the rub: it seems the very notion of social and viral marketing is antithetical to the idea of actually measuring its effectiveness.  It’s dynamic, random, explosive, and nearly invisible and seems to operate blissfully outside of anyone’s control.  And that’s precisely the charm and power of social media.

Having said that, if you can actually figure out how to make those tools actually work for your company and you have the time and the financial resources to throw at the effort, you’ll likely be miles ahead of your competitors. The key is using social media tools in the right context. Of course, the way things are going, by the time you do figure it out, those tools will have been made obsolete by the next generation of buzzwords.

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Is a modern MBA degree the worst thing to happen to business in the past 50 years?

That’s the theory put forth in a story published by the New Republic in December. It seems that in the days before WWII, most American companies focused on making things, producing goods to sell to other Americans and the world at large. After the war, however, large corporations began acquiring smaller businesses. Then, instead of needing to manage the production line, managers had to look after subordinate managers and the profits generated by those nascent units. Enter business schools, which began offering training geared to just that purpose.

Fascinating reading. Perhaps a cautionary tale for what may be looming on the horizon?

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This story describes the Crystal Palace as a “fully functional space station,” even though it exists solely in virtual reality. More amazing still is that transaction among users (residents?) of Entropia Universe, in which the space station exists, exceeded $420 million in 2008.

I wonder what a virtual economy would look like in Utah. Any ideas?

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Overstock is getting a bit more socially conscious, according to a story in the Jan. 6 edition of the Deseret News. Says the story:

The Salt Lake City-based Internet retailer announced Monday that it pulled listings involving items with alligator, lizard, ostrich, stingray, eel, shark and kangaroo skin from its Web site.

While it’s nice to see companies getting on the environmental bandwagon, is it good for business? Is pulling a product for sale because of its origin just a good PR move, or will it have a longer-lasting effect on Overstock’s bottom line?

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Thad Kelling’s Spotlight on Overstock.com Chairman and CEO Patrick Byrne has quickly become our most viewed story since the website’s launch in late 2008. Page views were twice that of the next two most popular articles: a Spotlight on Ted McAleer of USTAR and the Utah Student 25 feature.

No doubt due heavily to promoting the story on Twitter and Facebook.

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It feels like I wrote this letter just yesterday. I’ve been editor of Utah CEO for just over a year, which makes this my second Year in Review issue. It’s a curious paradox, how 365 days can seem so long and yet so fleeting all at once. The time flew, but were any of us having any fun?

The end of one year and the beginning of the next is nothing more than a signpost. Be that as it may, it’s a good opportunity to reflect. Utah CEO began three years ago as a quarterly publication. Judging by the archives, it’s come a long way since then, but even looking back over just the past 12 issues I like to think the magazine has continued to evolve. One thing I’ve tried to do is engage you, our readers, in generating content by asking “What do you need to know now?” I’m grateful to those who have helped me develop stories, and to those who have contributed as sources. Hopefully it has benefitted us all — feedback suggests that we’re moving in the right direction.

Moving forward into 2010 and beyond, I hope to ramp up the magazine’s engagement with its readers to become even more useful. To that end, we’ve introduced an online events calendar; please submits events of interest to the business community to jblodgett@utahceomagazine.com. While you’re at it, feel free to provide comments, criticisms and suggestions for what the magazine can do better to better serve you. And visit welcome to the new Utah CEO blog at www.utahceomagazine.com/blog. Like the magazine, it’s a work in progress; as blog, it’s a living document.

The signpost has been passed. It’s good to be traveling with you.

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I just discovered Operation Chokehold, one blogger’s crusade to call attention to AT&T’s lackluster network by, so his theory goes, bringing it to its knees. How? By convincing thousands of iPhone users to use high-bandwidth apps for an hour beginning at noon PST today. Judging by Twitter traffic around #operationchokehold, lots are getting in on the fun, with questionable results (is the network being affected, or is it just business as usual? etc.).

I’m an iPhone user who dislikes AT&T as much as the next guy. If the new Motorola Droid were out when I bought my iPhone a month or so ago, I likely would have paid $175 to leave my AT&T contract and sign on with Verizon. That said, I’m as much miffed as I am fascinated by this stunt. I’m not sure why.

What do you think about Operation Chokehold?

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