If your organization is looking at diving into social media for the first time (or is ready to expand it social media efforts) you’re probably wondering: Is this something we should do ourselves, or should we hire someone to do it for us?
Ideally, you want the best of both worlds.
Social media requires an internal commitment from your organization. A social media strategy simply won’t be sustainable if you aren’t investing time and resources from within. You can’t have everything handled by a third party. People want to interact with real people at your organization, and the authenticity and immediacy of that experience is essential. In fact, for social media to work, you need a social media point person – someone who will lead your efforts and who has the authority to make social media an organization priority.
At the same time, there are many good reasons to supplement your efforts by outsourcing some of the work – from set-up and design, to ongoing technical assistance and content creation. Above all else, it’s very easy for social media to take a back burner if you try to handle it all internally. For that reason alone, securing outside help is a good idea. If you’re paying someone to do the work, then the work will get done, not languish at the bottom of someone’s to-do list.
In addition to just getting things done, there are a number of other benefits that make social media outsourcing a good idea – regardless of the size of your organization or the scope of your social media plan.
- Speed: If you are new to social media – or ready to embark on a broader social media strategy – outsourcing can get things up and running quickly.
- Training: An outside team can teach you how to do things, set up workable systems and schedules, and then transition some duties back to your internal team over time if that makes sense for your organization.
- Reach: You will have access to the outsourced team’s existing networks, which can help your social networks grow bigger – and faster.
- Experience: You’ll also benefit from your outsourced team’s experience with other clients. This will allow you to avoid pitfalls and learn about options and alternatives.
- Synergy: An experienced team will be able to create integrated system of social media tools and channels, rather than a loose patchwork, allowing you to maximize your social media “nodes” for greater impact.
- Branding: You want to select a partner with marketing and design capabilities in addition to social media know-how. The right team will make sure that everything you do supports your overall marketing strategy, including branding and identity.
- Strategy: An outside social media team can help you develop a strategy and keep you focused on achieving long-term goals.
How much of the work you will want to send out-of-house (and how much of it will need to stay out-of-house over time) will depend on several factors, including your staff’s knowledge and familiarity with social media, how much time your staff can spend each week creating content and tending to your social networks, and the overall size and complexity of your social media plan.
Devil’s Advocate Question:
One of the so-called best practices is to be transparent, honest and authentic. It would appear, at first glace, that outsourcing your social media efforts (besides strategy) is not transparent, and inauthentic.
Your thoughts?
http://twitter.com/jordanwillms
Jordan,
You can and should be transparent and honest by identifying yourself and your employer. Regarding authenticity, everyone who represents a brand, cause, or issue needs to believe in what they are doing. All of us except volunteers get paid for what we do — from the CEO on down to the rank and file workers. Some are full time employees, some are part time employees, and some outsourced. Unless you are a volunteer for a cause you are an employee of an organization and your views should be judged in that light. Journalists are all employees as well and they are human beings capable of having personal agendas, politics, religions, prejudices, and phobias.
I think it is inauthentic to masquerade as someone you aren’t or to represent something that you don’t believe is worthwhile.
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social media outsourcing is a fine line in business. people will not like to find out that they are following a person that isnt actually “speaking” to them. the problem lies within the amount of time available and the tha amount of time that social media takes.
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Nice article. Really interesting points on why you would outsource your marketing.
[...] you are considering outsourcing B2B social media marketing, Spurspectives has compiled a list of top benefits of outsourcing this function to a social media marketing firm. [...]
Good article. Outsourcing is great, It is a service we offer our clients. What we and many other social media firms do is manage their pages and tell them to get a personal account they can use to interact with prospective clients on their pages, while we submit basic posts and do the technical work. For most companies who do not have time to do it all on their own, social media firms develop strategy and are there for them to assist in building their online networks more effectively than the company can do on their own.
4sUvOP Good point. I hadn’t thought about it quite that way.