8. Have you ever handled a crisis situation? Explain.
Answer:
A mature Manager needs to answer this question based on his/her experience. In order to answer this question, the manager needs to know that Bad news travels fast and on Social Media it travels faster. So, it is very important to swing into action.
He needs to be able to identify the crisis and have a crisis management plan in place. There are certain things that you can wait and observe while for others you need to quickly swing into action.
Focus your answer on what kind of crisis management plan you had and what did you do once you recognized that this is a crisis situation.
Here is a way in which you can answer this question:
The manager might be the first one to identify the crisis. Setting up streams in marketing tools (like Hootsuite) to monitor specific keywords to identify potential crisis can help you stay proactive in handling the crisis.
After the identification you need to understand if they can be just observed or give a one on one response or escalated to complete crisis status. Now, go on to explain this with an example.
For e.g. In one of the recent incidents, I was working as Social Media Manager for a Baby Product Client, we had just released a big budgeted ad campaign. After 3-4 days we started noticing a few negative tweets about the ad. We had set a crisis threshold:
- Less than 3 negative mentions: Observe and monitor closely.
- More than 5 negative mention: Assign messages to the public relations manager.
- More than 10 negative mention: Roll out the crisis management plan.
So, when you realized that the number of negative comments has started getting above 5, we started preparing ourselves to swing into action with the crisis management plan, if the need be.
We acted promptly: Those who are impacted by the crisis want the answers quickly. So, we worked on providing those answer before anyone else does. This helps in maintaining the customer's belief that the company is transparent and willing to provide solutions.
We responded to queries and complaints. Appropriate responses help in maintaining the customer's trust.
It is very important to keep communicating within the company and with the customers to prevent false information and rumors from spreading.
9. What are your goals as a Social Media Professional?
Answer:
The goals for a both a fresher and a manager need be S.M.A.R.T .i.e. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Sensitive.
For a junior role like Social Media Executive, the goals can be at execution level like:
i. Building brand awareness
ii. Generating Leads
iii. Improving Relationship
A manager needs to look at a bigger picture. Tell the interviewer how you will have an engaged audience. What would be your plan to engage the specific audience? Fresher's goals would include getting more likes or shares for a particular post but for a manager he/she needs to look at ways for growing business and planning.
10. Does Social Media Marketing have an advantage over Traditional Marketing?
Answer:
Traditional marketing is everywhere. The radio you are listening to, the TV you are watching, are nothing but traditional marketing. Traditional marketing may be larger than social media marketing but it has a few drawbacks:
i. Cost: The cost involved in social media marketing is comparatively very less. The metrics used here is CPM. It is far less than that of radio and Television. Even the cost of producing the promoting the promotional material is quite low comparatively.
ii. Getting feedback: Social media marketing gives you the advantage of hearing back from your customers directly.
iii. Trust: Rather than hammering the viewer with your Ads, Social Media is more about trust building and emotional attachment with the end user.
iv. More targeted: Social Media Platforms know the demographics of their customers which can help in making the campaigns quite targeted.
11. Is it easy to make a transition from traditional media to social media?
Answer:
Making a move from traditional media to social media is one of the most significant things you decide to do for your business.
You cannot say if the transition is easy or difficult but with the advancement in technology and Internet penetration, Social Media does have an upper hand in comparison to traditional media. You get your goals defined in social media marketing plus it gives you multiple platforms to efficiently and effectively promote your brand.
