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Social media marketing is one of the strongest, even arguably the absolute best, strategy to strengthen your business. It is very cost-effective. It boosts your brand’s recognition, increases its exposure, builds brand authority, complements your SEO strategy, furthers brand loyalty, and allows you to add a more personal angle of perception for your customers.
The thing is, it takes a powerful mind processor to crunch up and make sense of all the data that decent social media analytics gives. To an extent, yes, everyone can read that data and come up with smart business-driven strategies. Still, only true professionals can use all of those figures and create a plan with maximum efficiency.
With those facts in mind, the question is: should you outsource your social media marketing to professionals?
Let’s look at the pros and cons.
Social Media Marketing on Your Own: Pros and Cons
The benefits of social media marketing were enumerated above. Our pros and cons list will be based on how effectively those benefits are taken advantage of.
Pros
Cost-effective
If you do not outsource, this means you do not have to spend money on a professional. This really boosts your savings on marketing.
Boosts your brand authority
Brand authority is all about showing your customers that you know what you are doing. Though a professional social media marketer can do wonders, it is you who knows the core of your business. Being on social media and displaying your expertise in your field can significantly boost your brand authority.
Brand loyalty
Social media marketing boosts brand loyalty. When customers feel that you have their best interests at heart, they are more likely to support your brand. Being more hands-on with your social media marketing makes you more effective in boosting your brand loyalty.
The personal angle in customer perception
When you are entirely in charge of your social media marketing, you can fully control how your customers perceive your brand. Social media allows you to present your brand as a person. It enables you to interact, communicate, and express emotions – even as a brand.
Even though a professional social media marketer can do those things, you want your customers to perceive you, that you care about providing value and not just growing your business. You want to make your customers feel that they have a personal connection with your brand. That is an effective use of social media marketing.
Cons
You may have a working understanding of how to read data analytics, but professionals can most probably do it better. No offense, but that is their job. Your job is to run the business. You look at the bigger picture and make decisions that affect your entire business infrastructure.
A hired professional social media marketer only focuses on his or her job. Anything that has to do with making strategies based on social media data analytics, a professional can probably do a better job. That includes the following points.
Brand recognition
A professional can probably do a better job of boosting your brand recognition. Professionals can easily analyze how your social media marketing strategy is doing and pinpoint its strengths and weaknesses. They can broadcast your brand all over social media more effectively than you probably can.
Complements SEO strategy
This is yet another aspect of social media marketing that heavily relies on strong data analysis skills. The more people that see your content, the higher the chances that more traffic will flow onto your site. This complements your SEO strategy. However, professionals can be more effective when it comes to reaching more people with your content.
Just covering the basic benefits of social media marketing, we can see more benefits in doing it independently. However, these benefits only help you retain your current customers and make them more loyal to your brand.
If you want more growth for your business, you might need to outsource your social media marketing. There are a few more advantages to hiring a professional.
What are the Advantages of Outsourcing Your Social Media Marketing to a Professional?
We have already covered a couple of the advantages of outsourcing your social media to a professional (brand recognition and complementing your SEO strategy). Now let us see how outsourcing your social media to a professional can be beneficial in other ways.
Frees up More of Your Time
No one can connect better with your customers than yourself. But are you the best candidate to do your social media marketing? Can you still focus on managing – or better yet, expanding – your business when you have to spend 30 hours or so per week managing your social media?
Imagine not having to spend a massive chunk of your time analyzing numbers, graphs, or charts (and getting a headache in the process.) Outsourcing your social media marketing frees up a considerable amount of your time, allowing you to focus on other parts of your business.
Professionals have Expertise
Social media marketers are experienced in connecting with people through social media. You can expect much higher quality results with a hired professional than when you do it on your own.
Professionals Have the Right Tools
Social media consultants know their business. They know which tools work best for whatever purpose. You may not be as effective on your own because you are not using the right tools.
Trying out various software for managing, designing, scheduling content to see which is the best can waste who knows how much of your time. But professionals have already spent years perfecting their trade.
Professionals Know Social Media Etiquette
One of the most detrimental aspects of social media marketing is it can be cruel and unforgiving. One wrong comment or inappropriate content, one off-message sentence or phrase, and you’re kicked out of the game. A professional knows how to vet every piece of content you put out there, which ones are appropriate and which aren’t.
Managing Content
Outsourcing your social media marketing to professionals will definitely help in managing your content. This not only means scheduling and publishing but can also be designing. Social media users are on there for fun mostly. And yes, sometimes they are on there for education.
A professional who invested a lot of time on social media has a knack for knowing just what potential and current customers want to see. A professional knows how to balance your content for maximum engagement and quality.
Professionals Know the Platforms
One of the reasons why social media marketing can be so effective is that each platform has different people using it. This means that you can create content for different purposes on each platform. However, how do you know which content to make for which platform? And how do you analyze data from the different platforms and know how best to react to them?
An expert usually knows the ins and outs of multiple or all social media platforms, depending on their experiences and skills. If your central platform is Facebook, you can easily outsource to a professional specializing in Facebook marketing. If it is twitter, hire a twitter specialist.
With these benefits, you can make significant business growth happen. If you choose to outsource your social media marketing, you should work closely with the professional. No one knows your business better than you. Set the expectations, and let a professional work their magic to reach them.
Is Outsourcing My Social Media Worth it?
The average price of outsourcing your social media ranges from $50k to $70k a year, depending on how big the business or the project is, the hours required, and the services needed. Is that worth it?
The answer really depends on you. You know the benefits of outsourcing your social media marketing to professionals.
You know that outsourcing your social media gears your business for more growth. You know that it frees up your time to focus on other aspects of your business. You know that professionals can reach more potential audiences thanks to their expertise. You can make your social media marketing more effective by combining your knack for business and a professional’s social media savvy-ness.
What price would you put on those benefits?
