You’ve signed a social media client. Congratulations!
But now what?
As a social media manager, understanding your new client and their goals is essential to ensure a great experience for both parties. The sooner you can get the information you need to get started, the better. Adding a detailed social media questionnaire to your client onboarding process will ensure a quick and smooth transition. If you’re wondering what you need from your new client to get the onboarding process going, then you’re in the right place. In this article, we’re going to present ten questions to add to your questionnaire to get started.
10 Questions You Should Ask a New Social Media Client During Onboarding
Whether you choose to create a Google Forms template for your clients, or ask these questions over the phone, asking a few basic questions will help you start your relationship on the right foot. Remember, you are the social media expert, but they are the expert in their business. This is a relationship that requires collaboration, especially in the beginning.
Here are the 10 questions to ask your new social media client during onboarding:
1. What Does Your Company Do?
The first question is a bit of an obvious one–what does your company do? What does the brand stand for?
This is the heart of the company and the foundation for anything posted online. The business started with a dream, and you’re playing a part in bringing it to life. Knowing the “mission statement,” or the root of what a company does is crucial for accurately portraying their voice through social media.
When you know what the brand does and the transformation it can provide for its target customers, you are better equipped to “warm” the audience up for sales later on.
2. Who is Your Target Audience?
Not only do you need to know what the company does, but you’ll also need to start an in-depth conversation about their target audience. If they give you a simple statement like “women,” “millennials,” or “people over the age of 18,” you’ll need to dig deeper.
Get specific on exactly what the ideal customer for this company looks like. For example, what does their average day look like? What motivates them? Are they busy with kids, puppy parents, living with roommates, commuting 2 hours per day, etc.?
These are the finer details that will help you and your content connect with that customer. Knowing clearly what their target audience is like on a human level can help you determine the problems they will have. As you discover these problems, you can create content that really resonates with them.
3. What Makes Your Brand Different?
In all likelihood, your new social media client didn’t invent something groundbreaking. They probably have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of competitors. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t unique or special in their own way.
When you ask your client, “what makes your brand different?” they may take a moment of pause and reflection. It could be anything:
- History (second-generation family business, POC ownership, female founded, etc.)
- Commitments (sustainable processes, sustainable sourcing, recycled packaging, etc.)
- Product (better quality than competitors, an improvement on an existing product that addresses a complaint, etc.)
- Targeting (targeting men with a traditionally feminine product, targeting women with a traditionally masculine product, etc., or really offering any standard-defying/against-the-status-quo products)
- Processes (maybe they use less water in production than competitors, maybe they have a secret family recipe, etc.)
If none of these ideas work for them, a counter-intuitive strategy is to consider what they aren’t good at and back into their advantage.
Regardless, capitalizing on what makes them different will help attract the correct audience and make them stand out from the competition.
4. What is Your Past Performance on Social Media?
Now that you know a bit about who your new client is (and/or their company’s goals and audience), you should ask about their past performance on social media. Having a clear “starting point” for metrics will help you in this process see what is or isn’t working within their strategy.
If they’re starting from scratch, you’ll have to do a lot more testing/trial and error to come up with a winning strategy, but metrics can only go up from here!
Side note–if your customer has worked with a prior social media manager, it’s a good idea to ask what they liked/didn’t like about that relationship, or why it ended. Note: It is a serious red flag if they have nothing positive to say.
It will also give you a starting point so that you can prove that the clicks, likes, follows, saves, engagement, warm leads, etc. are improving under your watch.
5. What is Your Current Marketing Strategy + Workflow?
Similar to existing metrics and data, knowing if there is a strategy currently being used and some type of system/workflow will allow you to make suggestions or improvements (or connect to the existing plan) and help the organization as a whole.
Often, for companies, social media is an afterthought–something separate from their other operations within the business. If there is no marketing strategy in place, you can craft one based on your client’s audience and needs.
Social media works best in tandem with an entire suite of marketing initiatives. Without a cohesive strategy and synchronization, its impact will be minimal.
Knowing their workflow can also be useful so you can help streamline the process, insert your processes easier, and iron out any wrinkles.
6. What are Your Social Media Goals?
The next question that is crucial for your questionnaire is, “what are your social media goals?” Goals will vary by individual and company, but it’s important to have a landmark to be working towards. It’s difficult to track progress if a goal is vague.
If they’re looking for awareness and reach, then content that is geared toward shares and virality will be an important part of your strategy. But if they’re looking for warm leads, content geared toward nurturing their audience and building up a brand (and customer loyalty) will be more the focus.
If, for example, they give you the goal of wanting “to get lots of followers,” dig deeper. Followers are a vanity metric (i.e., not guaranteed to create meaningful results in any way). So you’ll want to understand why they want followers. Is it about credibility? Or do they associate followers with engagement or sales? Regardless, vague goals create vague results.
Instead of saying, for example, we want more sales, set a concrete goal of having a 15% increase in sales conversions by the end of the year. Setting realistic goals with numeric values makes them more achievable.
7. Which Social Platforms Do You Use?
This is something you may have already discussed prior to this point, but it’s helpful to clarify. What social platforms are you looking to use? Having multiple social media platforms involved in the marketing strategy can be beneficial for increasing brand awareness. On the other hand, having too many can be distracting.
When you know which platforms your new client currently uses, you’ll be able to review their progress and identify if the target audience is even on that specific platform. For example, a company targeting Gen Z looking for Facebook growth may have missed the mark.
From there, you can analyze which profiles have a bigger return on the time investment. You’ll want to put your focus in those places.
8. Which Types of Content Fills Your Calendar?
Just as utilizing multiple social media profiles can be beneficial, diversifying the types of content on the calendar is beneficial, too.
Each platform prefers different types of content.
- Instagram and TikTok (as of today), both strongly prefer eye-catching vertical short-form video over any other type of content.
- Facebook and LinkedIn prefer short and engaging text-based content (and Facebook likes to see a photo added in).
- Twitter limits characters and prefers frequency, engagement, and consistency over long thought-out posts.
These are also all subject to change as new features roll out over time.
If your client is still sharing only photos on Instagram, then you can expand their reach by using some of the other popular features, such as Reels.
9. What is a Realistic Posting Schedule?
Keeping a realistic posting schedule is important. Trying to be on every platform can be difficult, but it can quickly become overwhelming for you and the client if you commit to posting too many times per day or week in too many places.
To create a cohesive marketing strategy, you’ll want to understand their workflow.
Some of your content may be based on what the client produces (services, products, blog posts, etc.), so you’ll need to both have realistic expectations. This will decrease risk of burnout or miscommunication.
10. Do You Have Any Automation Tools You Currently Use?
At some point, automation is crucial for scaling any business. Knowing if your client currently has any automation tools they use will be beneficial for you in batching content.
If the new client doesn’t have automation tools yet, then you can recommend your favorites like Facebook Business Manager, Tailwind, or Later.
Social Media Client Onboarding Checklist
Speaking of automation, have you created a client onboarding guide? If you found this short social media questionnaire beneficial, then you’ll love our Social Media Manage Client Onboarding Template.
This template takes the guesswork out of what you’re supposed to do to get started with a new client. It walks you and your customer through the process step-by-step, showing you how to onboard smoothly. Make onboarding a breeze by having this template to walk you through what to get from your client, what they should expect, and more. Grab your template here.
References
https://www.sendible.com/insights/social-media-questionnaire
https://penji.co/social-media-questions-to-ask/
https://wearesculpt.com/blog/social-media-discovery-questions-we-ask-clients/
