Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr…the list is never ending. If you run a small to medium business it can be difficult to manage your social media accounts whilst running a business. Knowing how much time to spend on one platform is difficult, let alone two or three.
So what can you do to make your social media activities more time and cost effective?
The simple answer is to outsource your social media to another company. This is a highly debatable topic. Trusting someone else with your brand and reputation is a big undertaking, but when you find the right person for you, working alongside each other can have major benefits, offering great support and training for your social media activities.
What can you expect from outsourcing?
Firstly, you need to decide what you want to achieve from your social media efforts. Having an account for the sake of having one will not gain you anything. Ultimately, your initial thoughts will be to drive sales and increase brand awareness, but there is so much more that social media can achieve for you such as market research and understanding new markets. Outsourcing means that you can hand those objectives over to an expert who can guarantee a return on investment. Having an expert stay on top of your social media accounts, means that there is someone dedicated to making it work for you. From knowing what time of day and how frequently to post to testing and measuring you social media, specialists will have insight into what works and what doesn’t in terms of social media marketing and activities. Time is often a resource that people cannot compromise on. Time producing content for social media, is time away from lead generation, which is obviously key for keeping your business afloat. Posting a quick message or an offer is great for telling people what you do, but it doesn’t always have the best results for engaging your target audience. For the highest engagement, posts need to be appropriate and considered in order to maximise the results. Money is also a major factor for outsourcing your social media activities. You can save money by doing this, yes you heard me right. If you way up the cost of either, hiring a new member of staff to handle your accounts or having an existing employee carry out this role who could be doing other jobs, then the cost of outsourcing is fairly reasonable. The marketing benefits are endless, although you may have to supply some content, what is better than having an expert deploy a fully integrated marketing campaign across all social media platforms. Furthermore, a constant stream of fresh and new content will increase SEO optimisation and increase organic traffic to your website.
How do I choose who to work with?
When choosing someone to outsource your social media accounts you want to make sure that you find the right person, who is going to do right by your business brand and reputation. The things that you need to consider are not to choose someone who says they know everything. Social media is ever changing and is impossible to stay on top of it. Don’t be swayed by people who say they are industry specific because social media is universal, it can be adapted to any industry, and you need someone that understands social media, full stop. As long as you find someone that you can trust and openly provide the resources, then outsourcing is the vehicle for taking you to social media success.
If you want to optimise the use of your social media to achieve the best possible results, contact us to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can support you with that! Call us now on 01245 791969 or email us at [email protected]
