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If you outsource your social media management, you'll get a team of experts working for you.[/caption]
When you think about your business’s social media presence, you probably keep coming back to one question: should I farm it out, or do it myself?
Social media is a 24/7 proposition—and, for that matter, so is running a business. Who has time to do one, let alone both?
There are advantages to outsourcing your social media management and there are disadvantages, too. Let’s take a look at some of those, first.
Disadvantages.
- Losing your voice.
Your business should have a certain voice, tone and style that is not always easy to recreate or maintain. When you give the control to someone who isn’t invested in your company as you or one of your employees is, you risk losing that authenticity. - Slower Response Rate
When you outsource your social media management, you create another layer between your business and your customers. If someone asks a question or a serious concern arises from a customer, they have to go through your agency or consultant and then to you to get that question answered—unless your social media company answers it directly. Unless they’re experts in your line of work, they may not do it as well as you would. - It’s more difficult to be consistent
Outsourcing your social media management adds a layer between your other marketing efforts and your social accounts, which can make it tough to be consistent with your marketing efforts. This can also slow you down and make your business look unorganized.
Advantages
- More Time For Your Business
One of the most obvious advantages of outsourcing your social media management is the time it saves you. It’s true that running a business Facebook page, Snapchat account or Pinterest page doesn’t take a whole lot of time, but the extra minutes you spend there can add up—especially if you run a small business and wear as many hats as most family business owners do. - Expertise
The expertise you can get from a marketing professional or social media consultant is invaluable. If you run an autoshop, you’re probably not a social media guru, too. You wouldn’t advise a social media marketer to do serious car repair work, so don’t think you can run a social media business campaign as effectively, either. By outsourcing your social media management, you get access to their knowledge and expertise that can apply to your business. - Better content
Marketing agencies or social media management firms are most likely up to date on the latest trends and can easily adapt the best, most sharable content to fit your business, engage your customers and improve your search engine rankings. Posting your content isn’t all that time consuming—but coming up with creative content is. As a busy entrepreneur you know there are plenty of days when you simply do not feel creative. - Cost effective
Sure, you’d probably like your social media to be free. There are ways to do it without paying for it, but the reality is—as you’ve probably heard so many times before—sometimes you have to spend a little money to make money. Chances are you don’t have the resources to hire a dedicated employee to run your social media channels and you don’t have the time to do it yourself. Farming it out to a firm is the next best alternative.
So…the big question: should you outsource your social media management?
The answer, of course, is: it depends.
If you don’t have the time, resources, creativity, technological capabilities or mind set to handle your business’s social media, outsourcing may be the solution for you.
The right solution for you might be a combination of both internal and external social media management. You might want to hire someone to do the day-to-day posting, create content and manage it, but pay attention to your feeds at the end of each day.
Whichever you choose make sure the company you select is responsive—both to your ideas and to any issues that come up.