In this video, Ed Weeks Jr., founder of HV Social Media, provides a practical, step‑by‑step framework for business owners to evaluate and select a social‑media marketer. He advises starting by requesting the candidate’s personal and business social‑media accounts; if they refuse, it’s a red flag. He then suggests using concrete, observable metrics: a baseline of roughly 1,000+ followers, consistent post frequency, and engagement levels (typically 40‑50+ likes and 10‑20+ comments per post across multiple posts). He emphasizes checking multiple platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) for social proof and warns against relying on referrals, age, or assumptions that younger people automatically know social media. Candidates who fail any of these criteria should be dismissed, while those who meet them can be considered for a partnership. The overall message is that choosing a social‑media marketer can be reduced to simple, data‑driven checks rather than intuition or relationships.
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Hey everybody, Ed Weeks Jr., the founder of HV Social Media. Got the hat today, wall, you're probably getting used to this scenario, this is my office here. Really putting this video together today to answer a question that I often receive. I receive this through direct messaging, I receive this in networking scenarios, I receive this in emails, text messages, you name it. I get one question more than I get any other, and that is, how do I, Joe, Mary, business owner, choose somebody, select somebody to work with to do my social media? I look at it this way. It's simple. All you have to do, if someone is in your direct messaging or in your email or in person talking to you about, hey, I can do your social media, I can drive your content, I can drive your engagement, I can drive your, Your likes, your followers. I can do all those things. Where's the simplest place to start to look to see if this person can actually help you? Just go to their accounts. You can look at their accounts, both personal and business. So anyone who won't give you that information, that should be a red flag to you. If you ask for somebody, hey, let me see your accounts. Let me see what you're doing, and they hum and haw about it, move on. That person is maybe they're too new to provide that information, or maybe they're just not good. What they do. They're just looking for, you know, that quick sale, move on to the next person. You don't want to deal with that. So that's the first thing. The second thing is you actually get that information. You can look at anyone's account quickly and determine if they can do their own social media the right way. So if they have, let's just say, over 1,000 followers, that's usually a good place to start. Okay, I have over 1,000 followers. Cool. That means let's go to step 2. If they have less than 1,000 followers, you can still proceed to step 2. But if they have, let's say they have 800 posts and they have maybe 250 followers, that person has posted more than you're going to post on your account over the next 2 years and they haven't been able to grow a following, which means they don't know how to connect to their own audience. How are they going to know how to connect to yours? So that person I would X off. But let's just say we have over 1,000, less than 1,000 followers, uh, but we can go to step 2 and look at their posts. Look at the post, look at what they're doing for their own accounts, both personal and business, because if they can do it personally They could probably do it for a business. If they can do it for their business, they can obviously do it for your business. So look at both accounts. We go into posts, we start to see, okay, they have less than stellar likes. Maybe they don't get 40, 50 likes per post. Maybe they get 1 or 2 comments on their posts. This person does not know how to do social media. Now look at more than 1 post because we are not all that good that we get perfect engagement on all of our posts, but just look at it. If they're sub-100 likes, sub-10, 15, 20 comments, they're not getting the engagement that you need to start developing an actual audience for your business. So you can eliminate them and move on to the next. At this day and age, it's February whatever the heck it is, 2019. If they don't have an account that makes you say, okay, they can do their own, let me at least now talk to them about doing mine, why would you bother with them? There's no point. There's so many people out here who can do it. So, A lot of businesses that I've met with in the past, they bring in the younger generation to handle social media, which is a huge mistake unless that younger person is really good at social media. How do you look at that? Look at their account. It's that simple. Like, we have to make this more simple than— for some reason our brains just associate, hey, that kid is 18 years old, he has to know how to do social media. Nonsense. Maybe he's really good at Snapchat, but— or she is really good at Snapchat, but your business has no reason reason to be on Snapchat because you're not looking at that demographic. Look at their Instagram, look at their Facebook, look at their Twitter, look at their YouTube. There's so many ways to see if somebody can actually do good social media. Social proof, look at it. I am not— ask me, Ed Weeks Jr., HV Social Media. Find me on any platform and you'll find damn good engagement because I'm confident enough to tell you that because I know what it takes to get damn good engagement. So at the end of At the end of the day, social proof means a ton, especially when you're looking for someone to do your social media. Pretty simple, guys. Pretty simple, girls. Go out there, look at the social proof. If it's not up to your par, move on. If you don't like what I do, move on. It's not a big deal. There's, you know, there's enough out there to be able to see what great looks like and who you want to work with. That's what I have for you today. I hope it helps you understand that choosing a person to do great social media It's a lot easier than we make it out to be. There's no reason to just spend money and throw out money just because somebody was referred to you or because somebody has a relationship with the person they're referring to you. Look at what they do on social media. If it's up to what you consider to be good or great, go for it. That's it. Peace.
