Top 40 Social Media Marketing (SMM) Interview Questions and Answers-(2024)

1 .

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a digital marketing strategy that involves using social media platforms to promote and market products, services, or content. It leverages the power of social media networks to connect with the target audience, build brand awareness, drive website traffic, and ultimately achieve marketing goals.

2 .

Explain Some Key Aspects of Social Media Marketing (SMM).

* Platform Selection : SMM involves choosing the right social media platforms that align with the target audience and marketing objectives. Common platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, and more.

* Content Creation : Creating engaging and relevant content is crucial in SMM. This content can include text, images, videos, infographics, and other multimedia formats. The content should resonate with the target audience and encourage interaction.

* Audience Engagement : SMM aims to foster engagement with the audience through likes, shares, comments, and messages. Responding to comments and messages promptly is important for building a positive online presence.

* Paid Advertising : Many social media platforms offer paid advertising options, such as sponsored posts or display ads, which allow businesses to reach a larger audience and target specific demographics.

* Analytics and Monitoring : SMM relies on data and analytics to track the performance of campaigns. This data helps marketers understand what's working and what needs improvement, enabling them to adjust their strategies accordingly.

* Influencer Marketing : Collaborating with social media influencers who have a large and engaged following is a popular SMM tactic. Influencers can help promote products or services to their audience, providing authenticity and credibility.

* Community Building : SMM involves nurturing online communities and forums related to a brand or industry. Engaging with these communities can help build trust and authority.

* Brand Reputation Management : Social media is a platform where both positive and negative comments can spread quickly. SMM includes strategies for managing and maintaining a positive brand reputation.

* Conversion and Sales : Ultimately, SMM aims to convert social media engagement into leads, sales, or other desired actions, depending on the marketing goals.

* SMM Campaigns : Marketers often run specific SMM campaigns, such as product launches, contests, or seasonal promotions, to achieve short-term objectives.

3 .

What are all the social media platforms I should use for my business?

The choice of social media platforms for your business should be based on several factors, including your target audience, business goals, industry, and the type of content you plan to create. While it's not necessary to be active on every social media platform, it's important to select the ones that align with your business strategy and where your target audience is most active.

Here are some of the major social media platforms to consider : Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, WhatsApp and Messenger, Quora, Tumblr, Yelp and TripAdvisor, etc,.

4 .

Describe one strategy that will help you succeed as a social media marketer.

Authenticity is key. No matter the type of company you’re interviewing with, whether their audience is businesses or consumers, it’s important to be genuine. By doing so, brands can establish their trustworthiness to their audiences.

5 .

What is the impact of social media on marketing?

First of all, the consumption of social media is so high and people use multiple social media platforms in a given day. So, it is important for brands to use social media marketing as one of their primary marketing strategy to reach their targeted customers, converting them into users, keep existing customers brand loyal, solve their problems with the product, answer their queries, and more.

That’s one of the reason, social media marketing is one of the areas where companies are investing now. Social media reaches and connects with targeted audiences which were never possible before. Also, social media increases social traffic to your website.

It plays a part in improving your SEO ranking, brand authority, helps you understand the behaviour of your customers, builds relationship with them, improves sales and leads, make you an authority in your market, and if you want one more reason, your competitors are already spending a good amount of money trying to be the market leader.

6 .

What are some blog techniques that can boost website traffic?

Following is a list of some of the most popular and often used techniques that will help increase website traffic:

* Promote your content on a variety of popular websites, such as Facebook.com, Pinterest.com, etc.
* You can share your blog post’s image and title on Instagram. Even posting images to popular networks like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, or Flickr is possible.
* Share a quick content presentation on websites that resemble slide-sharing services and provide a direct link to the information.
* You’ll pin the article if you use a pretty title or picture.
* You might also upload a quick video with your content on social media platforms.

7 .

Why social media is so popular?

Social media is so popular because there are multiple reasons people around the world use social media.

Primary reasons are :

* It gives the possibility to stay connected with friends and family.

* It gives the opportunity to find and connect with new people.

* Social networking sites are free, and they implement various algorithms to find the type of content users might like and display similar type of content on their feed section.

* People use social media sites like Twitter to stay updated & connect with the brands they like.

* People use sites like LinkedIn for professional networking.

* Looking at beautiful visuals from people all over the place, share their photos with the help of sites like Instagram

* To learn new things, to kill time with the help of video entertainment.

* According to GlobalWebIndex, 54% of social browsers use social media to research products.

8 .

List down some of the popular social media tools.

Following are the top social media tools to use :

Social Clout : Social clout is a social media analytics tool which helps advertisers to track engagement and ROI.

OptinMonster : OptinMonster lets the advertiser engage with visitors at the perfect moment.

Audiense : Audiense is a social tool let’s you find new target audiences and categorize them.

Tweepi : Tweepi helps you find relevant users interested in the topic of yours. You can engage with the users, following them and eventually make them follow you.

Socedo : Socedo finds people who come under your buyer persona radius. After you find your audience, you can segregate them into multiple divisions, so you can promote content accordingly.

Socialbakers : Socialbakers is a set of tools to help you make decisions based on your followers. It lets you measure the performances against your social competitors.

ZeroFOX : ZeroFOX is a tool that helps companies to be safe against hackers.

Followerwonk : Followerwork helps you optimize your audience. It recommends you the people to follow.

CrowdBooster : This tool gets real-time data. You can then make reports with your KPI.

9 .

How is LinkedIn useful in terms of marketing?

LinkedIn One of the best social media sites for promoting oneself or a business. The company account must first be search engine optimized.

Growing the number of followers on a company page is facilitated by consistently offering informative content. Rich content has previously demonstrated to be quite effective and will help to increase engagement.

By occasionally supporting your work, which the website needs, regular walks will be made available. By employing LinkedIn analytics, we can periodically assess your performance and modify your strategy. LinkedIn is the most popular platform for content delivery, with 94% of B2B marketers using it.

10 .

What advantages social media can offer a company?

Social media benefits businesses by increasing public knowledge of them and their goods. Social media can be utilized to engage customers since it allows for direct customer-brand communication.

Even smaller businesses may afford organic social media updates because they are cost-free. Paid social media marketing is also typically less expensive than other forms of online advertising. Social media reaches all populations.

Additionally, it helps you reach influencers and increase your visibility, it boosts sales, it helps you promote your content, it helps you deal with negative comments about your brand, it gives you a way to learn more about the attitudes of your customers, and it aids in keeping an eye on your rivals.

11 .

What is No-follow and Do-follow in social media marketing?

No-follow is used in SEO under social media marketing to stop search engines bots in following or using a hyperlink for ranking thus reducing search engine spams. Whereas Do-follow allows search engines so as to add on the number of outgoing or incoming links for a website.

12 .

Describe CTR in social media marketing.

CTR in social media marketing expands to Click through rate and is the number of clicks received on your advertisements on websites / search engine against number of times it was shown.

It is calculated as: CTR = Number of unique clicks/Number of times shown x 100

13 .

Differentiate amongst CPC and EPC

CPC in social media marketing expands to cost per click and is used in pay per click pricing or PPC pricing as used by Google’s AdWords.

The term EPC expands to Earnings per 100 clicks and is used in affiliate marketing to ascertain earnings by affiliate on basis of clicks received in a week or seven days

14 .

Which marketing metrics are the most important to track?

Below points will explain the answer;

* You should do some research on the business types
* Have a look into their social media presence
* Answer the questions, what you have learned.

15 .

Mention the key difference between SEO and SMM?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Marketing) are both digital marketing strategies, but they focus on different aspects of online visibility and user engagement. Here are the key differences between SEO and SMM:

1. Objective :

* SEO : The primary objective of SEO is to improve a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and increase organic (non-paid) traffic to the website. It involves optimizing various on-page and off-page elements to rank higher for relevant search queries.

* SMM : The main objective of SMM is to promote a brand, products, or content through social media platforms. SMM aims to engage with the target audience, build a social media following, and drive traffic and conversions from social media channels.

2. Channels :

* SEO : SEO primarily focuses on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It's about optimizing your website to perform well in search engine rankings.

* SMM : SMM revolves around social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. It leverages these platforms to reach and engage with the audience.

3. Traffic Source :

* SEO : SEO generates organic traffic, which means users find your website through unpaid search engine results. They click on your website because it's considered relevant to their search query.

* SMM : SMM generates traffic from social media platforms. Users come to your website or engage with your content because they discovered it through their social media feeds or interactions.

4. Timing and Persistence :

* SEO : SEO is a long-term strategy that requires continuous effort and optimization. It may take time to see significant results, and rankings can fluctuate.

* SMM : SMM can provide more immediate results as social media posts can quickly reach your audience. However, the impact can be more short-lived, and maintaining a consistent social media presence is crucial.

5. Content Types :

* SEO : SEO primarily focuses on optimizing website content, including blog posts, articles, product pages, and other on-site content. It involves keyword research and optimization.

* SMM : SMM involves a wide range of content types, such as text posts, images, videos, infographics, and more. The content is tailored to the social media platform and audience preferences.

6. Paid vs. Organic :

* SEO : While SEO primarily deals with organic (unpaid) search results, there are also paid search advertising options like Google Ads that complement SEO efforts.

* SMM : SMM includes both organic strategies (e.g., posting regular content) and paid advertising options (e.g., sponsored posts and social media ads).

7. Measurement Metrics :

* SEO : Metrics in SEO often include rankings, organic traffic, click-through rates (CTRs), bounce rates, and conversion rates from organic search.

* SMM : SMM metrics encompass engagement metrics like likes, shares, comments, follower growth, click-through rates on social media posts, and conversions attributed to social media.

16 .

How will you boost Tweets or Twitter posts?

To best practices to boost tweets are :

* Find out the best time to post on Twitter
* Reach out to influencers and connect with them. Try to engage in a cross-promotional activity.
* We can use twitter paid ads to quickly reach out to our targeted audiences.
* Use hashtags properly. Not too much but the right ones to get more reach.
* Schedule your tweets and use calendar to organize everything.
* Use images, links, GIFs to increase retweets.
* Use twitter polls to let users engage with your content.
* Creatively participate in twitter chats to increase your brand awareness.
* Share good content from across the web to increase follower count.
* Use video in the post to improve the reach and engagement rate.

17 .

What are best practices on Twitter?

Following are some of the best practices on Twitter

* Don’t keep the tweets too lengthy that users won’t even read. Tweets are supposed to be crisp and hitting.
* Don’t use too may hashtags. Stick to maximum 2.
* With the help of Analytics, find what kind of tweets work and improve your strategy.
* Twitter advanced search can help you manage your marketing activities.
* With the help of twitter tools, schedule and plan your tweets.
* Use multimedia to create more engagement.
* Find the right time and day to post.
* Engage with your audience.
* Measure results and make decisions based on your experiments.
* Search and add valuable followers.
* Optimize your Twitter profile.
* Use Twitter tools to schedule tweets.

18 .

How to use Social Media to help website blog promotion?

We can use the following strategies to utilize social media for blog promotion.

* Sharing and promoting content across various platforms such as Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
* Create a short video about the blog post and share on video sharing platforms such as YouTube.
* Conver them into infographics and share on sites such as Instagram
* Use different titles and descriptions based on the social media platform.
* Make different boards on Pinterest and promote on Pinterest.
* Use sites such as Slideshare and give a backlink to your blog post.
* Implementing social media sharing buttons on the blog.
* If the blog post mentions a popular celebrity, mentioning him/her might let him/her share the blog post from his/her social account.

19 .

When should you avoid using social media?

One of the most typical inquiries concerning social media marketing is this one. There aren’t many negative comments made just to get attention.

When responding to negative comments, one should be considerate, avoid starting online arguments, and simply answer as a business that cares about its customers.

20 .

Tell the reason why Google Plus failed?

Because Google lacked a clear plan when it created Google +, it was shut down last year and failed to gain traction.They started because they were scared of the already-established and rapidly-growing Facebook. Google Plus, however, wasn’t intuitive and user-friendly like Facebook.

Google Plus’s circles were not as obvious as Facebook’s groups. Many users found its symmetric sharing scheme to be complex and opaque. Google Plus’s growth was further halted when people began using smartphones to access the internet since, unlike Facebook and Twitter, it wasn’t really mobile-friendly.

21 .

Is B2C or B2B marketing on social media more effective?

Social networking is essential for all kinds of businesses. But the final goal and strategy must be different. B2B businesses need to project professionalism and share informative material.

B2C companies can engage with their target audience on social media by posting lighter or amusing material.

Business-to-consumer companies prioritize publicity, traffic, and revenue while B2B brands prioritize lead generation.

22 .

How long will it take to see results from social media marketing?

It depends on a lot of factors.

It also depends on what results actually means to your business. Engagement and leads might take longer and it’s about how good your content and strategy are. If you are looking for shares, fans, comments, other engagements you should see results in a month provided how engaging you and your content is.

It also depends on your budget. If you are ready to spend more money, the results will come way faster.

It also depends on the level of commitment and consistency.

23 .

How to improve Facebook organic reach?

To improve Facebook organic reach, you need to share content which is specially designed to generate shares and attention. Take time and effort to engage with your audience. Increase your organic reach with paid promotion.

Use Facebook as a community hub to connect with a lot of people. Collaborate with Facebook influencers so your business will be in the eyes of their followers. Find the right time to post on Facebook to improve your EdgeRank.

24 .

How to improve your Facebook EdgeRank?

Post rich content: Use photos, videos, GIFs to attract more users.

Post regularly : Affinity is an important factor in EdgeRank

Keep it short : Social media users don’t like to read paragraphs on social media. So keep it short and crisp.

Find the right time : Fresh content always get good EdgeRank so find the right time and schedule your post accordingly.

Engagement : If users engage with your content more, they will most likely to see your content again in their news feed, so design your content engagment friendly. Likes, Shares and Comments increase your EdgeRank.

25 .

How do you deal with negative comments or an online reputation crisis?

There is a list of things I do follow in order to tackle negative comments or an online reputation crisis such as:

Acting quick – Before the issue becomes big and become viral, respond appropriately and provide or promise a solution to the user or users. Respond to the posts or comments in a polite way with a relevant and convincing answer.

Not deleting it – Deleting it makes it look like their claim is real and we are afraid of truth going out.

Informing the management – to let them know the situation and let them share any of their ideas

Responding to each complaint – to let the world knows you are not just a business to make money but care about their customers and trying best to give the best service possible.

Making one-page answer to all the questions they have – and promoting the page to rank on organically so when people search about it, they will be taken to the page instead of your social media channels. Even if users directly come to your social media page to ask about the issue, shift them from social media pages to take off the spotlight.

Showing the human side - by personalizing the message, not sounding like a bot, apologizing sincerely, don’t over-promise and show your human side.

26 .

How does customer service fit in social media strategy?

Social media is generally to connect with friends and family. To find new people and engage with them. So, even when businesses enter into social media, it’s primary purpose is customer service as the platform is basically about people and not about brands. When companies have started their social media channels, customer service may not have been an intention.

Now 74% people use social media to connect with the brands when they have doubts, complaints or anything else. Companies with faster and effective responses have an edge when it comes to customer service on social media.

27 .

How to use Instagram for social media marketing?

We can use Instagram for social media marketing by

* Utilizing product teasers that could urge people to purchase.
* Using sponsored ads to reach more targeted audience.
* Finding and connecting with influencers.
* Crafting a consistent brand on Instagram.
* Conducting competitor analysis and find their strengths and weaknesses.
* Posting at the right times.
* Making use of Instagram analytics.

28 .

What are social media calendars and How did you create one?

It is one of the most common social media marketing interview questions. Social media calendars are apps or excel sheets used to schedule posts in advance. It will help you track which content will be shared so you can plan accordingly for the future.

* Social media calendars help you to organize otherwise a chaos task. It helps you save time and analyze your results easily.

* I create a social media calendar by setting monthly social media goals, deciding on a content mix for your channels, adding content to the calendar.

* After it’s ready, we can use it to create, schedule and publish social media posts.

* We can use excel which is cost-saving or we can use external software with automation feature that can greatly reduce your effort and time needed.

* Social media calendars use to track the performance of the posts which will be helpful to plan future campaigns and posts.

29 .

What are all the skills required to become a social media manager?

Social media manager should have the following skills :

* The ability to plan a strategy for the business.
* Very good communication skills and convincing skills.
* Very good verbal communication and copywriting skills.
* Creativity to develop innovative campaigns and content
* The ability to provide customer service and responding to complaints
* The ability to organize and schedule posts and campaigns
* The ability to connect with influencers, industry experts and leaders.
* The ability to analyze the data to understand user behaviour
* The ability to build and maintain a social media publishing calendar
* The ability to strategize and look after social media campaigns, making changes when necessary
* The ability to use tools to report, analyze social media campaigns
* The ability to be both data-driven and creative while being people’s people

30 .

Why don't we hold a free drawing for a prize on our Facebook page for people who share and like our posts?

Facebook doesn’t push users to like and share content in order to enter contests or win prizes. Because doing so essentially amounts to manipulating Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm to boost rankings. Thus, we shouldn’t hold a free competition on our Facebook page where participants must like and share posts in order to win.

31 .

What components make up a viral video?

When creating a viral video, a lot of factors need to be taken into account :

* The video’s target audience must be identified by the strategist. The likelihood of the video going viral is higher if it appeals to a wide audience rather than a specific demographic or niche.
* The creator must capture the audience’s attention in the first 30 seconds so that they will choose to watch the complete video.
* User clickthrough rates are influenced by titles that attract their attention. The topmost layer of attraction is this. The CTR rate will be high if the title is intriguing enough.
* The method of promotion for the video is crucial. Sending them to journalists, bloggers, vloggers, influencers, social media platforms, etc. is one way we push things online.

32 .

What tasks does a social media manager perform?

The duties of a social media manager include the following :

* Recognizing the objective of the company.
* Recognizing the products, market, rivals, and company model.
* Goal-setting, strategy, and planning.
* Reputation management online.
* Engage internal stakeholders.
* Creating a variety of social media methods.
* Assemble, direct, and manage a social media marketing team.

33 .

Mention a few common errors brands make in social media marketing.

Among the most frequent errors brands make in social media marketing are :

* Lacking a social media plan to begin with
* Failing to comprehend what their user wants
* Disregarding criticism
* Instead of publishing information that presents a faceless corporate face
* With the use of social media, there is no customer service.
* Posting only unrelated content

34 .

How can you use social media to increase leads?

The interviewer is interested in learning about your capacity to boost the company’s lead generation. Every organization would ultimately seek to enhance sales or leads with each marketing effort. You must demonstrate how significantly social media may increase their lead quality for the money they are spending on it.

The response ought to be tailored to their industry. For certain types of businesses, some techniques wouldn’t be effective. Some businesses may benefit from contests while others may not.

Today, many businesses employ social media advertising as a common tactic to enhance their lead generation. You can describe how LinkedIn lead generation forms, Facebook lead advertisements, and Instagram lead ads can benefit their company.

35 .

How important is online reputation management in social media?

A good social media manager understands how customers view their brand and consider online reputation management is one of the top priority task and nothing about it should be taken lightly as it is vital to improve the brand loyalty. As a social media manager, you are supposed to find problems at their earlier stage and tackle them with diplomacy.

Explain how well you can handle ORM software and how much of a people’s person you are to handle this task.

36 .

What are the advantages of social media marketing over traditional marketing?

This is one of the social media marketing interview questions where the interviewer expects you to share the advantages of social media. Some of the advantages of social media marketing are:

Cost : Comparatively social media cost is much lesser than traditional or even search advertising cost.

Feedback : With social media, you get feedback from the targeted audience and can design future campaigns accordingly.

More targeted : Being one of the inbound marketing methods, it’s more targeted.

Immediate results : You can make a product popular within a day.

37 .

What is the use of Google Analytics in social media marketing?

Google Analytics helps to track the amount of traffic directed towards your website from various social media channels.

38 .

How to stay updated in Social Media?

* I do follow a good number of industry blogs and forums to update myself with the latest trends, news, research, ideas and more.

* I implement my knowledge into my day to day activities to understand how they work.

* I attend seminars and workshops periodically to network with fellow social media experts and get more knowledge through their experiences.

* I use LinkedIn groups to find current issues and solutions.

* YouTube Channels, Podcasts and webinars help me keep updated.

39 .

How to set a budget for social media advertising?

The first step is to determine the overall budget for all digital marketing efforts.

Then, we will need to determine the percentage of the budget we would like to spend on social media advertising.

Of the digital marketing budget, I recommend spending 30% on paid social media advertisements. But this one is a general one. Only after the ROI and potential, a clear plan must be made for the budget. The strategy should be adjusted every quarter in order to align with overall marketing goals.

While creating social media strategy, there are few things which need to be considered like buyer persona profiles, calendars, branding profile and strategy, response plan, goals for determining the performance of the strategy.

The budget will be spent on :

* Advertising

* Content creation

* Follower growth

* Outsourcing

40 .

What are our competitors doing in social media?

This will be one of the important social media marketing interview questions. It is to understand how well you analyzed their business and market which would show your homework and dedication to the interview.

So, analyze their top 3 competitors and find out how are they promoting their business on social media. What kind of strategies they are using, List down their strong points as well as weak points.