Outsourcing Social Media Postings
“I don’t have time for Facebook!”
We get it. Most business owners didn’t open their own business because they wanted to do marketing, or sales, or accounting, or any of the other multitude of tasks necessary to run a successful business. Unfortunately, for businesses without employees to manage these tasks, there’s a necessary trade off between doing what you love to do (walking dogs for instance), and doing what you need to do (like sales and marketing) in order to generate new business and pay the bills.
I read an interesting blog discussion this morning regarding the cons of businesses outsourcing social media postings (Facebook, etc.). Their main contention was that whoever you’re outsourcing this task to isn’t as invested in your company as you are (okay…) and they don’t know it as well as you do (uh huh…), so they could potentially damage your reputation by not posting or responding appropriately. Hmmm….
Really?
Well, yes, if you just hire someone with no expertise and send them off posting with little-to-no direction and input from you, then sure, it’d probably not only be a waste of your money, but could potentially be catastrophic to your brand identity. If that’s how a business owner outsources, manages employees and runs the business in general though, pretty sure their social media presence isn’t their biggest concern!
So what’s the solution? Well, it varies for individual business owners depending on a number of factors ranging from time and money to how computer savvy you are and what your end goals for engaging in social media are. If you have all the time in the world and are an internet social media tweeting posting junkie, then by all means, the best solution is for you to manage your social marketing yourself. After all, as the owner you DO know your own business better than anyone else.
If you’d rather be engaging Fido in a romp around the block while his master is in the Caribbean, then perhaps you need to either hire an employee or outsource to someone with the expertise and commitment to the success of your business to appropriately manage your social media and online presence.
For most of our clients the solution actually lies somewhere in between. If you decide to jump on the social media train, just make sure that your social marketing/media plan takes into account whatever level of involvement makes sense for you individually.
(And of course, be sure to post your photos of Fido on Facebook so your Caribbean client can relax and enjoy his vacation!)