As a business owner or Marketing manager, do you currently find yourself in a position where you are not sure whether to hire additional team members to get on top of the company's Social Media activity or to rather hire someone external? Here are some points you might like to consider:
First of all, if you hire an external consultant they will already have years of experience that your company will benefit from. Rather than researching every bit of the strategy, the tools you could use and the different functionalities of each platform yourself, the consultant will already know all the answers. This way planning and working on your Social Media accounts will not only be less tiring for you but it will also be more efficient in terms of costs.
Of course, you could also carefully screen for a suitable applicant to take on in your company, but the hiring process alone will be costly. On the other hand side, a quick google search will yield plenty of results for potential Social Media consultants and they will come to you for free to pitch their services.
You know that your customer is king and it's your most important goal to make and keep them happy. Does your Social Media presence reflect that yet?
Not replying (fast enough) to comments - especially when there is a complaint - can shed a really bad light on your business. Users on Facebook are most active in the evening or morning after or before they go to work. Naturally, your own employees will not be working at that time as comments will be left unanswered.
You can circumvent this by hiring an external consultant. They are responsible for managing your Social Media platforms 24/7. Some agencies who work internationally will even have a day and a night shift to ensure there is always someone there who can look after accounts in the other regions. Therefore, no comment, like, share or message will go unnoticed and you don't have to worry about insufficient community management.
By outsourcing your Social Media management you will free up time in your team to focus on what they are doing best. More often than not Social Media management is given to some intern or to someone who is anyway already working 60 hrs per week. To add another 32 hrs per month (this is how long is needed to look after a single social platform per month) will simply be too much for them. Of course, for them some other tasks might be more pressing than to create another post for Social Media.
When hiring a Social Media manager you can be sure that nothing is more important to them than posting on your profiles. Just like you want to keep your customers happy, the Social Media manager wants to keep you happy. Therefore, you can count on them giving their everything to perfectly execute your SM strategy.
Here comes the No. 1 factor why most companies decide NOT to hire an external consultant: The price. This misbelief is often guided by overpriced agencies that charge for every single task extra. However, it doesn't have to be like that.
There are plenty of agencies and consultants (me included) out there that offer packages which will cover the management of all your social profiles at a set rate so you don't have worry about any bills that come as a surprise.
My "Rise above" package, for example, includes the management of up to 2 social profiles at 499 € a month. This adds up to not even 6.000€ per year to be completely worry-free.
Even if you have to add some ads budget on top (which you will need to do anyways, even if you manage your accounts internally) this will be probably less than what you would pay an employee in 2 months and you will get more experience and commitment naturally.
For many company owners it might be daunting to come up with ideas for Social Media on a daily basis. You might think "What more can I talk about?". Also often people focus on their point of view from within the company when the question should really be "What more do my customers want to see?"
Working as a Social Media manager, I know that the key to a successful strategy is to know your audience and to be fully committed to delivering value to them. While business owners are often more concerned with the benefits of their product (and that's totally fine - you should be amazed by it) they sometimes forget to think about what the audience would like to see.
Therefore, it can be incredibly beneficial to have someone look at it from the outside. They might find a better angle to talk about your products that is more relatable for your customers.
As mentioned before, an external consultant's top priority will also always be to deliver the best possible quality of work. Of course, it is unquestioned that there will be a lot of communication between your team and the consultant up to a point where the consultant will be properly embedded in the organizational structure to ensure alignment with the overall marketing strategy. Nevertheless, an external SM manager will bring a fresh pair of eyes to the table that your company will be benefiting from.
As briefly mentioned before, your goal will need to be to have your SM profiles be in line with your overall CI - I get that. But it is misleading to think that this means it can only be done internally.
SM Managers are trained to quickly get the hang of your brand and will therefore understand the importance of being in line with your strategy. Just like you might not be working on the overall company strategy as a marketing manager, you will still draw conclusions from it for your department.
Even more so, SM managers will pay attention to consistency across your feed. Drawing a clear image of your value proposition in the customers' heads by posting content that is in line with your brand is essential for a successful SM strategy. So don't you worry that your CI will be watered down if you hire an external consultant - we won't let that happen.
