Social media has officially become a business. Many in the industry would argue that it’s been a business for years, but until recently it has been very hush-hush and hidden in the shadows. If you were to count the number of people claiming to be social media gurus, experts, marketers, or strategists a year ago, it would have probably been in the hundreds.
Today, it’s in the tens of thousands. Scanning Twitter and Facebook alone is evidence of this, and they are only a small part of a true strategy.
As huge corporations, home-office startups, and everyone in between rushes to get into social media, the first question that they must ask themselves is, “Do I do it myself, hire someone to do it at the office, or outsource it to a social media marketing firm?”
It’s a good, simple question. The answer is far from simple.
Rather than go into a long description of each option, here is a simple “pros and cons” analysis. As part of a social media strategy firm, I am biased towards outsourcing. Our company is scalable to the point that we can handle any client large or small with tremendous success. However, this article is geared to be informative rather than being a sales pitch, so I will keep my personal goals out of it. Just the facts…
Hire a Person or People to Work Exclusively for the Company
— Pros —
- Direct control over the messages, branding, and promotions
- Dedication – an employee with one company in mind will be more interested in the success of that company than a social media firm with many clients
- Creating buzz around the campaigns and employees themselves – Mashable on Colonel Tribune
— Cons —
- Expense to search for, hire, train, and pay a full-time employee
- Sick days? Vacations? Accidents? Resignation?
- Lack of expertise – while there are exceptions, those who are good enough to truly understand and utilize social media to its fullest for business are not going to take a “job” when they know they can make more money as part of a team working with multiple companies and consolidating the efforts whenever appropriate.
- In the viral marketing aspect of social media, one person or even a small team is not able to compare to the clout on social news sites of a social media marketing firm.
- Bad press – Example: Jalopnik on Ford
Hire a Social Media Strategy Firm
— Pros —
- Leaving it to the experts – A few social media strategy firms really know what they’re doing. They’ve accumulated the resources, accounts, profiles and contacts to take campaigns to the top, to properly build company-related social media properties, and to get the buzz heading in the right direction.
- Cost – It’s normally less expensive to hire a firm to do social media marketing compared to hiring an individual or team to work exclusively for a company.
- Set goals and monitor result – For most companies, the convenience of being able to set the direction, sit back, and wait for results is extremely appealing.
- Changing landscape – Social media sites change their procedures regularly. What works today to get a front page story on Digg or massive retweets on Twitter may not work tomorrow. A company who is deeply embedded, who breaths social media every day, can be a tremendous benefit.
— Cons —
- There are thousands of companies and individuals offering social media marketing services who can barely spell “Digg” or “Flickr” the proper way. Trying to distinguish between the handful of quality firms and the thousands of low quality or scandalous outfits can be daunting.
- Lack of control – IF you can find a social media strategy firm who is really good at what they do, they are normally pretty stubborn. They know what works and it’s hard to tell them otherwise or send them in a different direction.
Do It Yourself or Add it to the Workload of a Current Employee
— Pros —
- Cheap – all it takes is time
— Cons —
- Cheap – all it takes is time, a lot of time
- Lack of experience – there are how-to guides, ebooks, and blogs on how to implement proper social media strategies. Some work. Most don’t.
- Poor execution – having a poorly run social media strategy is worse than not having one at all
Regardless of what you choose, try to stay flexible. It’s important to know when something isn’t working as well as it should be.
Soon, we will go into details about how to recognize a real social media strategy company versus someone who spams sites and talks about how good they are at social media marketing.
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Read more about this topic on this Social Media Strategy Blog.
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I don’t like the idea of using an external company. It goes against the whole ethos of social networking, I don’t want to talk to a company, I want to talk to the people inside of the company, the whole reason this type of marketing works is it allows a company to build trust between them and the consumer by appearing more human.
If you employ an external company that only tweets/updates about the companies activities it is easy to see. At least in my view this damages the companies image, just another company trying to swindle me out of my hard earned cash, nothing interesting to say, nothing of value to offer and clutters up my inbox.
This could be just me. I have an inherent distrust of companies. I just don’t think this is how the internet and social media should be used.
Well in this day and age, Not just internet marketing but traditional marketing is also being outsourced. Take direct marketing, telemarketing or for that matter, customer service.
When a company has their employees tweeting or blogging, still it is not personal. In this sense then again only the founder or the owner should be tweeting to make it personal. Again the employee also may take it as a job like any other outsourcing company’s agent. So if one is thinking of getting to update their social media networking through their employees, it is no better than outsourcing to another company.
@rich97 – Ideally, the owner of a company (or someone high up) would be doing all of the Tweeting. They would read the DMs, the @replies, and they would respond in kind.
The problem that most companies have is that they don’t know…
(A) How to get started
(B) What to do after the start
They also don’t want to get stuck replying when it’s a general question. I remember reading some of @Starbucks tweets. Very informative – if you ask for nutritional data on a drink, they’ll tweet you back the link. Stuff like that. For a VP or higher to spend the time on it would be impossible considering they get hundreds, sometimes thousands of @s and DMs a day.
Outsourcing or hiring someone to manage the social media accounts makes sense as long as they understand how to Tweet, how to find information for people, and when to move a Tweet up the ladder.
@Raj – Exactly. The key is to have the right people doing it… right. If something should be addressed by the CEO directly, the team or individual should have a line of communication open to him or her.
There is no one perfect solution that works for everyone. If a company is new to the social media component of marketing then it should hire a social media firm to help create a strategy to see how and where to use social media. But once the company understands that social media is basically a conversation with its customers, it makes no sense to outsource this.
A large company with many employees can afford to hire someone or even several people to handle this task. If they are already doing in-house marketing it’s a matter of adding to the skills of their employees. A smaller company may simply need to give this job to one of their best people, not a newcomer but someone with a loyalty and understanding of your business and your products.
The whole point of social media is a personal connection. Press releases sound like press releases, outsourced social media is a contradiction. People will see through this in seconds.
It may be possible to hire a social media firm to oversee what you and your employees are doing, issue a periodic report card and perhaps offer further training. But to have an outside firm pretending to be your friendly neighborhood merchant makes no sense and can be harmful to your business.
“It may be possible to hire a social media firm to oversee what you and your employees are doing, issue a periodic report card and perhaps offer further training.”
Cosigned.
@Larry @George
Yes, that makes perfect sense. Sounds like another article needs to be written – “Option 4: The Hire/Outsource Hybrid”
If possible…do both personal and with a firm. The personal touch is the reason social media is what it is. Being too corporate turns people off now-a-days. ” Being transparent” is the new thing.
There is something to be said for teaching someone to fish, but so many companies and the management of those companies are overextended that they don’t have time or resources to learn the tools.
If they had been thinking about social media, they would have included it in CMO job descriptions and in Marketing plans.
Therefore, the best way to get companies on board is to try some teaching with some partnered outsourcing.
I’ve found through teaching some social media for business courses I’ve been able to do some onsite advanced sessions to hand the baton over to the actual people in the organization who will be tweeting, managing communities and putting out content.
As a content creator (20 years journalism and freelance writing) I find that many clients come back to me to plug the holes in the dike when they have a crisis.
But for the most part, just getting started is the hard part. Legacy management doesn’t value social media because of ROI and until it’s clear that a lead generated via Twitter is as valuable as one they spent $300 on via direct mail, there won’t be a conversation.
Thanks for listening and good piece.
Good weighing of options here. It gives people and corporations a really good look at the options. Different people are going to need different solutions, depending on whether they have time or capital. I think it’s necessary for some people outsource social media, despite the fact that some people feel this goes against the essence of social media. If you are going to use social media as part of your marketing arsenal, you might have to outsource it, especially if it’s something your company has no experience with. Better to do it right, with refinement, than go stumble around blindly.
Surely any company worth their salt who is going into the social media arena needs to embrace it as part of their overall communications strategy.
Just “bolting-on” tweets and blog posts using an external agency is shortsighted. Most social media tools are, by nature, easy to use by non-tech people, so an entire cultural shift is required to ensure that employees themselves are contributing to the company’s social presence.
Social media is just one element of a larger movement with the user at the centre of any experience and ignoring this or not bringing this awareness and knowledge in-house I suspect is not a great long-term strategy
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http://www.becomethebrand.com
I know there are alot of social sites out there but I just wanted to see if anyone has seen StudentDriven.com a social site run by students from colleges and universities around the world. If not you should go check it out.
It is useful if you have lots of websites and you have no time to do for the campaigns but if not do it yourself is the best option. You can have your man for 300 dollars a month to do that for you just contact me.
iheartinfo at gmail.com
It could be considered a subset of #2, but it’s not a bad idea to look at another option: contract with a solo social media consultant. If you work with a good one, you’ll get close, personalized service, focused expertise, and consistency.
There are many ways to personalize your social media participation and still hire an outside person to help. This outside source can help with strategy, get you setup and started and give you tips along the way. An outside source can help with account management thus giving the “company” in question more time to jump on and be social.
There are many ways to combine the personal touch of social media and the assistance of an outside firm.
there is a fine line to walk with social media. outsourcing to the proper group is imperative to making social media actually work to benefit the company rather than cost the company