Social media marketing and content creation are extremely important in today’s world of online brand management. Without social media engagement, brands can miss out on a ton of valuable lead generation, traffic and commerce. Because of this, engaging with your audiences and fan-bases through sites like Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook are pre-requisites for success in the online world. There are many people who claim to have social media expertise and who wish to provide their services to you, but how can you know if they’re really up to the task? We’ve put together a quick list of criteria that you should consider when evaluating the bona fides of any potential social media hire.

Ask to See Qualifications

Every social media expert or guru has experience in a variety of fields and areas. The demonstration of this should be very easy. Whenever you begin the process of consulting with a variety of individuals and firms for social media assistance, it is only natural that you should ask to see what qualifications they possess. This not only includes formal qualifications such as education and portfolios, but a variety of other elements such as personal bios, websites, industry involvement and the amount of time they’ve been active in the world of social media. Some of this information can easily be found by pinging websites, while other qualifications will need to be asked for personally.

Verify Specific Claims

A variety of social media firms and professionals will have well-established websites and social media profiles. It is through these venues that they will advertise their services and make specific claims. Since you are planning to hire a social media expert in the hopes of achieving better results, it only makes sense to corroborate their claims by inspecting their own websites and profiles. If a social media guru is promising to rapidly increase the number of likes or followers that you have on Twitter or Facebook, then check to see how large and diverse their own followings are on these platforms. Anyone who talks the talk should be able to walk the walk: by verifying whether their own claims are being realized for their online presences, you’ll get a better idea of their actual expertise.

Evaluate Engagement

Communication and engagement on social media is the most important element of long-term social media management. Without interaction, a social media brand can never achieve greatness. Through their own efforts, take a look to see how they engage with other individuals. Are they responding to comments on Facebook? How many retweets are they receiving for each piece of content published? In addition, it is important to evaluate the tone and type of engagement occurring; can the person handle criticism, complaints and compliments equally effectively? These situations will often arise in any busy and successful social media empire: it’s important to verify ahead of time that any proclaimed professional can handle them.

By verifying specific qualifications, evaluating how they interact with users via their own brands and determining that their claims are something they’ve achieved before, you’ll be able to ensure that the social media experts you hire know what they’re doing and can deliver results.