As recently mentioned, outsourcing part of your social media could be one of the most sensible solutions for your food, wine or tourism business.
So, how do you decide if you want to outsource social media?
To help determine if you should outsource certain tasks to a social media marketing manager, why not ask yourself:
- How much time do I realistically have to devote to maintaining a consistent presence across social media platforms?
- How important is it that I post every post and monitor all happenings across social media platforms.
- Is my time better spent focusing on the money-making activities which I’m particularly suited to handle within my business?
You may determine that you don’t have the time or expertise to handle all your businesses social media needs. Then the next step is to decide what to outsource.
From personal experience, I strongly advocate that a social media manager should never replace the brand manager or business owner completely online. Ideally, the social media manager should filter out time-wasting tasks and easily answered questions.
There will come a time, however, when the business owner needs to be the one responding to certain questions, particularly when they demonstrate the uniqueness of their experience or knowledge.
Similarly, even if ninety-nine percent of your business social media marketing is handled by an outsourced social media manager, you should never be unaware of what’s going on.
Always ask for regular reports and set up a time to monitor, analyze and review your social media presence.
If you’re passionate about your product or services, chances are you’ll want to personally step in yourself and take part in online discussions from time to time. When it comes to consumer interaction, true knowledge builds credibility like nothing else,
There are however, certain time-consuming tasks associated with social networking you may still want to consider outsourcing. When you hire a social media manager they should be able to help determine your unique needs and exactly what to outsource, as well as how to strategize your entire social media campaign.
Tasks you can easily outsource include:
- Social Media Platforms set-up (Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn etc) – having a branded presence designed professionally with your business goals kept in mind, can help start your business off on the right foot.
- Content Creation – the saying that ‘content is king’ has never been more true than in the social media context. A good social media manager should be able to craft engaging content that will be well received by your online networks.
- Social Media Insights and Analytics – if you’re not totally familiar with measuring metrics and tracking your reach, this is a great area to outsource. First, however ensure you work with your social media manager to craft a strategic plan, so that goals can be tracked and measured.
- Blogging – hiring a social media manager or content writer to produce strategic, timely articles will help you maintain consistency, a key element when it comes to building your social credibility as well as helping with SEO.
If you’ve decided to outsource, start researching social media manager and connect with their social media networks. Practice due diligence by checking references and ask to see real-time, online results of their work.
Until next time…..
