Social media job interviews are commonly nerve-wracking and high-pressure, but with a little homework and practice, you can be prepared for any question your prospective employer might throw your way!
Our list below looks at the 20 most commonly asked social media interview questions for social media roles and provides inspiration about the best ways to craft your response.
While it might feel that interviewers pick questions at random, they’re often working from a predetermined list, with each designed to unpick your skills, personality, knowledge, education, and capabilities to work with enthusiasm and as a valued team member.
By understanding the focus of the question and what the interviewer may be looking for, you can massively boost your chances of being short-listed or offered your dream social media role, putting in some practice beforehand to ensure you come across as professional, confident, and well-prepared.
1. Tell Me What You Know About Our Brand Presence on Social Media?
Companies want to hire social media marketers who are familiar with their brand, have put effort into investigating the business’s current socials, and aren’t afraid to provide honest, informed, and constructive feedback.
The interviewer really wants to know what background research you’ve done or to test your knowledge of their products or services, so the best approach is to:
- See which channels the company is active on.
- Look at their follower numbers and general likes, follows, and comments.
- Get a good idea about the types of content they post.
A great response would showcase that you can name the primary socials the business uses, and run through a brief recap of your findings, mentioning promotions or recurring posts that catch your eye.
If you’re asked for suggestions, you can certainly share them, perhaps by pointing out which platforms have lower engagement than others or identifying where there are long gaps between posts that provide an opportunity to improve audience touch points by creating a more consistent posting schedule.
2. How Much Experience Do You Have Using Social Media Advertising Tools?
This question tells your interviewer about your familiarity and existing expertise, so even if you only use personal accounts and are applying for a junior or entry-level role, you have a great opportunity to talk about the posting features, editing functions, or tools you use regularly.
Even if the question is specifically about advertising, you can provide a comprehensive answer by having a play with the tools on the major social platforms or by reading social media instruction guides so you know how to set an ad budget, choose a targeted audience, upload reels, or change visual media to accompany promotional posts, and use keyword research to fine-tune your hashtags.
3. Which Social Media Platforms Do You Most Enjoy Using?
While it might sound like a trick question, you don’t necessarily need to say that you love spending time on LinkedIn if you barely use your account, simply because it’s the social site where the company has the most activity and followers.
What the interviewer wants to know is how many platforms you’ve used, what you already know about how they work, and the typical demographics who use them.
You can use this question to talk about your personality and add context, where interviewers want to learn about the way candidates might work in a team environment rather than ticking boxes next to skills and qualifications.
For example, a social media applicant could say they love Instagram for creative videos and fun carousels but use LinkedIn to share their professional accomplishments and network with others in the social media marketing space.
Pro tip – a huge proportion of businesses will check out your social media profiles before the interview, especially if the job is heavily based on social media marketing, so some housekeeping may be necessary if there are any posts you’d not like them to see!
Worth a read: What’s Your Social Media Footprint and Why Does It Matter?
4. What Would You Do if a Social Media Campaign Wasn’t Working?
Crisis management is part and parcel of all digital marketing jobs, so the right answer isn’t about exactly the steps you would follow but about showing you can work collaboratively, be clear when something isn’t meeting its targets, and have the capacity to recognize a problem, and act decisively to solve it.
You can talk about the signs that a campaign isn’t having the desired impact, investigating the aspects that could require editing, such as the title, tone, text, promotional offer, placements, customer targeting, or the visual assets used in the campaign.
Another great talking point is how you could approach colleagues such as other marketing team members to chat about the issue and brainstorm the best resolutions – rather than going off alone or deleting a campaign with potential simply because it wasn’t working as expected.
5. When Do You Think the Ideal Time Is to Publish a New Social Media Post?
Companies hiring staff to work on their socials need the assurance that you have some baseline knowledge about how social media platforms work and how to use them to their advantage, so this question is checking on your technical know-how.
Of course, there isn’t any universal answer because that depends on factors such as:
- The age and location of the brand’s target customer.
- Differences in time zones between areas.
- The platforms the company is using and when they have the most active users.
Unsure how to reply? Tell the interviewer you’d assess their platforms, review the engagement and click-through metrics, and make data-based decisions based on those insights to post content at the point in the day when the largest proportion of their audience is active.
6. Would You Recommend One Social Media Site to Help Us Expand Our Reach?
If you already know a bit about the business, you should be able to provide a succinct reply, thinking about the sector the company operates in, what it is trying to sell, and to whom.
A great reply here could shed light on analytical capabilities by talking about the major age groups on each of the most popular social media channels and mentioning one or two platforms where the company doesn’t currently have a page.
There may not be any obvious choices, in which case you might say that a platform the company already uses is the ideal place for their customer base and then expand on that to discuss ways to enhance engagement and reach by maximizing visibility through that platform.
For example, the business might have a reasonably busy Facebook page but post solely advertising content and could mix that up by posting non-sales content and media to help foster a sense of community and relatability.
7. How Do You Stay Up to Speed With New Social Media Trends?
Social media is one area of marketing that doesn’t work with a ‘get it and forget it’ mentality since platforms continually introduce new features, tools, and guidelines.
The interviewer wants to see that you’re up to date, understand the pace of change in the world of social media marketing, and proactively try to stay ahead of the curve by learning about new functions as they are released.
Citing some of the popular social media blogs, digital marketing blogs or industry magazines, using Google Alerts, talking about influencers relevant to the brand, or using a previous competitor research project to demonstrate how you identify and follow interesting trends all work well.
8. What Makes a Social Media Promotion a Success?
With this question, the interviewer isn’t necessarily asking for a back-to-basics run down of what success looks like; think sales, inquiries, click-throughs, comments, shares, and likes.
Instead, they’re keen to find out whether you can set goals and understand KPIs, using defined targets to analyze the performance and impact of a campaign and make informed decisions about whether to make changes or repeat a format that is proven to succeed.
A fantastic answer would be to run through some of those customer responses that the campaign might be aimed at and then talk about analytics and monitoring, setting benchmarks beforehand, and using feedback to inform your next move.
9. How Would You Manage Negative Feedback on a Social Media Site?
Every social media page and post is subject to negativity, whether a customer hates an item they have purchased and writes a scathing review or takes offense to the tone or language used in an everyday post.
The interviewer won’t expect you to be able to avoid any negative interactions whatsoever but needs to know what you’d do if you were facing a reputation crisis and how you would protect the brand from further damage.
Showing that you appreciate the importance of speed, transparency, and damage limitation is important, firstly by acknowledging the comment or review rather than ignoring it or attempting to delete posts or comments that aren’t what you were expecting.
Companies are very conscious about their reputations but also need to show that they take complaints seriously and won’t disregard a customer with a legitimate concern because the review they have shared doesn’t paint the brand in a positive light.
Explaining how you would approach the situation, from engaging with the customer, investigating the issue, publishing a public and honest response, and an apology where necessary, is a great answer.
10. What Would You Do to Improve the Chances of a Post Going Viral?
Social media marketers know that viral content is the gold standard – but it’s also not something you can guarantee or pay for. The right answer would show your understanding of why posts go viral and the impact that can have on brand visibility.
Some of the potential ways to boost the prospect of a viral post could include thorough demographic research, creating high-quality, engaging, thought-provoking, or funny content, and working with well-known influencers with large followings.
11. Why Have You Applied for This Role?
Here’s a question in every interviewer’s back pocket, regardless of the job you’re applying for! Another pro tip – never respond to this question by speaking badly of your previous employer or current role because the interviewer will perceive that you might do the same about their company were you to be offered the position.
Your response should be truthful but provide some insights into your social media career objectives, what makes you feel like the company would be a great place to work, and how well your skills match the job criteria.
For example, explaining that you have been in your current post for some time, have invested in training and career progression, and are excited to move forward with a company in their business space shows motivation, passion, and an appetite for success.
12. What Would You Say Is the Number One Skill for a Role in Social Media?
Now, the right answer to this question depends a little on the job you are applying for because although communication is the biggest requirement for most social media jobs, that may not apply in the same way for a position focused on analytics or research.
However, great communication, a willingness to work as a valued team member, and the ability to convey personality, tone, and character through social media posts are essential, particularly if the position involves content creation, customer services, or other aspects of establishing a dialogue with social media users.
13. How Do You Cope With Multiple Social Media Channels?
Most companies have brand pages on at least two social media platforms, so what the interviewer is really getting at here is twofold:
- Can you juggle your time, manage under pressure, multi-task, and
- Do you understand the intricacies of posting guidelines and formats on different platforms?
You can talk about your previous experience if you’ve been responsible for managing multiple channels before and can demonstrate your knowledge by explaining the pros and cons of cross-channel posting and multi-channel platforms.
While some aspects need to remain the same across all company social media pages, such as tone of voice, it’s equally important to tailor content to the audience and to the page – for example, posting a Tweet directly onto Instagram without any visual simply wouldn’t work.
14. What Mediums and Content Would You Use on Our Social Media Pages?
This question is all about discovering whether you have diverse content creation skills and can provide insights into the contrasting benefits of video, GIFs, graphics, text, and interactive content such as polls and surveys.
Rather than responding with one specific content type, this is a place where you can show your knowledge of different kinds of posts, the campaigns they are best aligned with, and which platforms are ideal for each medium.
A good illustration could be to talk about video content as a great lead gen tool but suggest using snippets and short-form content on socials such as Instagram and Facebook linked through to YouTube, so you maximize your audience without trying to post something on one channel that doesn’t fit the layout.
15. How Would You Create a New Customer Persona for a Product or Service Launch?
Customer personas are used throughout digital marketing and mean the brand has a fictional person who is their dream customer in terms of age, affluence, location, education, interests, and preferences. In your reply, you want the interviewer to see that you can research, think creatively, and conduct deep-dive analysis of sector statistics and trends to build a fully-fledged persona.
However, another bonus answer could show how customer personas adapt, or companies can use multiple personas to improve the success of a product launch. For example, if the brand manufactures vacuum cleaners and their only persona is a Mom who lives in the suburbs and is around 45, they might be missing huge opportunities.
Recreating a persona for a college student living in dorms and promoting lower-priced models or designing a new parent persona to focus on vacuums that remove dust and improve air quality could be a way to show your scope and ensure the interviewer recognizes you have some amazing ideas to share.
16. How Do You Balance Social Media Advertising Costs and Company Budgets?
Businesses will set their own social media budgets and may potentially have a social media manager or executive responsible for overseeing spending – but the interviewer wants to see whether you understand the importance of budgets and whether you can bring value to their social media team.
Rather than simply monitoring spend, a great reply is to talk about goal and target setting before a promotional campaign goes live and analyzing the cost per click or overall spending to make adjustments as necessary.
17. Explain How Social Media and SEO Are Linked?
Although the job you’re applying for may be primarily based on social media, it’s also important every marketer appreciates the connection with SEO and can liaise with the broader marketing team to help influence brand positioning and SERP results through their social media activity.
The interviewer wants to find out how well you understand the concepts, their correlations, and contrasts, so talking about brand awareness, social proof, visibility, and market share is an excellent response, along with noting how optimized social media posts can benefit other digital marketing endeavors.
18. How Would You Measure Returns on Investment Against Paid Social Media Posts?
While not all social media promotions and posts will be paid for, a business wants to ensure that any social media professional understands the underlying objective, whether that’s to increase revenue, enhance profitability or work on a longer-term strategy to improve the brand position in a competitive market.
Returns on investment are crucial because they show senior leadership teams why their social media budgets are necessary and what they have achieved with the allocated budget.
The best answer here is to talk about the metrics you might use within your KPIs and how they contribute to those big-picture goals – things like web traffic, blog subscribers, email opens, registrations, and inquiries as part of a lead gen approach.
19. What Would You Do to Help Improve Lead Generation Results?
Lead gen is ultra-important and is the first step in attracting prospective customers who travel through a sales funnel to become paid-up buyers and, hopefully, loyal, long-term followers.
Social media is great at lead gen because it allows you to use a blend of creative outputs, sales promotions, and other incentives, such as competitions and draws, to encourage people to register their details.
Talking about the multimedia nature of social media and some of the ways you might capture customer information – think audiobooks, webinars, and online events, can show a solid understanding of lead capture. For extra marks, mention data protection and the need to ensure every lead who signs up provides permission to be contacted!
20. Why Should We Hire You for Our Social Media Team?
Last but definitely not least, this is another question asked at almost every job interview, and it can trip you up just as you’re nearly done. Try not to panic or feel awkward about selling yourself or providing a justification to hire you over another candidate (that’s the interviewer’s job!).
Instead, list your strengths, passions, interests, experience, and motivations, and try to provide one or two reasons you’re a good match for the specific job, be that because you love the brand and its products or feel like your enthusiasm for the role slots perfectly alongside their essential criteria.
Take Away
Hopefully, these social media interview questions and answers have given you tons of ideas about how to prepare for your social media interview and respond decisively and confidently to every question that comes your way!
As a final tip, we’d recommend practicing your responses a few times in advance (even if it feels silly doing so in front of a mirror) – that stops your replies from sounding too rehearsed and means you’re less likely to stumble or forget what you’d planned to say at the crucial moment.
Also check out: Top 20 Digital Marketing Interview Questions & Answers
