Should you Outsource Social Media Marketing?

As an Indianapolis small business owner, everyone is claiming the benefits of social media marketing for awareness, as well as driving traffic to your website or business location.  But perhaps your current team doesn’t have the time or creativity to manage your company’s social media marketing efforts. Should you, then, outsource your social media marketing to a professional social media marketing firm? Let’s discuss the advantages and determine whether outsourcing your social media makes sense for your business.

• Frequency matters: In the social media world, your message will get lost in the shuffle if you don’t have the frequency of regular daily and weekly posts. While you can post ahead of time on sites such as Hootsuite, if your company’s Facebook page has one post in the past 6 months, it’s time to outsource to a professional who can post more often.
• Variety matters: If you or your team post the same type of messages on every status update, and they tend to be more promotional than entertaining, educational or conversational, you may be better off outsourcing your social media marketing. A professional can add some variety and keep the subject matter objective while inserting a promotional update every once in a while.
• Growth matters: An outsourced social media marketer will help you uncover ways to grow your fan base through strategic posts, and following other influencers. A good social media marketer will be able to uncover these strategies for your business and industry, helping you to gain new followers over time.
• Expertise matters: While a social media marketing firm might not know your industry inside and out, a good two-way communication strategy between you and your social media marketing firm will help familiarize them with your business, sales strategy and industry so that they can post effectively on your behalf. A more seasoned professional may be better skilled than a young professional in this regard. If the subject matter is too technical, it may not be a good fit for an outside social media firm.
• Professionalism matters: Make sure your social media marketer has solid grammatical and writing skills. While typos and mistakes happen on social media, and often they can’t be undone, you don’t want such mistakes to give customers a negative impression of your business.
• Cost matters: While you often will get what you pay for when hiring a social media marketer, the costs of outsourcing your social media marketing are not as expensive as you may think. With prices starting at around a few hundred dollars a month, having someone handle your social media marketing for your business can be an affordable way to market — and prove even more cost-effective as any advertisement or direct mail campaign.

So if you’ve been on the fence about hiring someone for your social media marketing efforts, maybe it’s time you give it a second look. As long as you hire a professional, competent social media marketer who understands your business and goals, you’ll be on the road to social media success.