Top Things to Consider When Outsourcing Your Social Media

It’s no secret that social media is vital to brand awareness and sales tools for most businesses. Consumers who are influenced by social media are 4 times more likely to spend more on purchases, according to a Deloitte report. Moreover, the influence can be so high that 29% of consumers were more likely to make a purchase on the same day of using social media.

With all of the hats business owners juggle managing social media and staying up with best practices, trends and changes can feel like a daunting and overwhelming task. Enter social media managers and management agencies. In this post, we highlight the top things brands should consider when outsourcing their social media.

1. Determine if you’d rather work with an agency or an independent contractor. There are benefits on both sides including the fact that an agency has more resources and typically more capacity to handle larger or smaller projects and an individual has fewer resources. Agencies cost a bit more because of higher overheads and freelancers typically are less.
2. Look for examples of work and results in your industry or similar industry. It’s important to see success with similar clients from your prospective social media manager. If they were successful with others in your industry chances are they can be successful with you. There are a lot of social media managers out there but you want to be sure you find someone who can get you results. A great place to start is the social media manager or agency’s website, and customer social media reviews on Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn.Take a look at their portfolio and results for clients. Think of this as a partnership. After all, they will be managing a very important part of your brand.
3. Do you have content and a strong brand or do you need to establish visual content and branding? A social media manager can only do so much without quality content including brand photos, videos, a website that converts, and clear and concise branding. If these things are not in place, you may want to consider hiring an agency that can deliver these services or an agency that can handle creating your branding, visuals, and social media management.
4. Set your goals on what ROI you want to achieve with social media. Is it to grow your brand awareness? Increase your number of customers? Keep up with the competition? Establish expert authority in your industry? Set realistic goals and allow time for your new social media manager to learn your voice and brand. Keep communication open but allow enough space for them to be creative.

Outsourcing social media is a big first step to delegating a very important part of your marketing to free up your time as a CEO and business owner. Consider the steps we outlined to make the most out of your social media partnership.

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