Outsource or Hire? What makes a Good Social Media Manager?

You know that social media marketing is important to promote your business, however, you don’t have the time to do it all yourself. What are your options? What do you look for in a social media manager or even an SEO specialist?

Let’s Cover Your Options First…

1. Hire an outsider to do it all for you.
2. Hire an employee in-house with the knowledge and experience.
3. Train a trusted employee on how to do social media and content marketing properly and effectively.
4. Or learn how to do it yourself and carve out time to do it — that’s putting in some sweat equity.

What to Look for in a Social Media Manager:

Whomever you hire, that person should…

• Be a social media specialist, who knows everything — all the ins and outs of social media marketing — not just how to post on Facebook or Instagram.
• Know how and where to keep abreast of all social media news, network, and changes on Google and SEO.
• Have a decent following on the major social media networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram and be using them regularly. They should have a completed LinkedIn personal profile — which shows you they know what they’re doing.
• Understand the difference between all the networks — knowing the lingo, who their users are, and their cultures.
• Know how to use tools like HootSuite, Buffer, TweetDeck (no longer free – now called “X Pro”), Sendible, etc. to manage all the social media networks.
• Understand SMART goal-setting to be able to outline objectives.
• Know how to prepare a social media strategic marketing plan to help reach those goals, and outline the strategies for each network.
• Know how to develop a tactical marketing plan based on the strategic plan to implement the strategy.
• If blogging is involved, be a decent writer, communicator, and SEO copywriter.
• Be familiar with your industry or be willing to learn.
• Know how to handle customer service issues when they come up on social media.
• Be clever enough to know how to spin a marketing message and take advantage of what’s trending on social media without looking foolish or hurting your company’s reputation.
• Understand analytics and insights to be able to provide you with monthly reports showing what’s working and not working. Most importantly — are your goals being met?
• Consequently, be able to adjust the strategic and tactical marketing plans accordingly with new goals and campaigns.

As employee positions go, there are a lot of ways to say the same thing. These are some that are out there are:

• Community Manager: this person works with one network only, usually including customer service. They are a relationship builder.
• Social Media Manager/Coordinator/Administer: a person who does everything with managing and monitoring all networks (using the free or paid tools) as well as strategic and tactical planning, analytics, and reporting. This person may or may not supervise employees. The position title depends on the salary. Visit Salary.com to determine the going rate in your area.
• A Social Media Specialist, like myself, usually works freelance, on a contract or per-project basis. They specialize in social media marketing. They don’t usually build websites or manage emails or marketing automation. Then define if you want organic marketing — that is, non-paid — or someone to manage paid advertising. For example, I’ve seen PR firms take over social media for a client and make dozens of mistakes. I specialize in planning, branding, and optimizing for search and training, as well as organic content, digital, and SEO marketing strategies.

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What about Content Marketing and SEO?

Clearly, as I mentioned, content marketing and SEO are equally important as managing the social media networks. Just doing social media marketing without content marketing, blogging, and search engine optimization (SEO) won’t work. Given that, whomever you hire needs to be up-to-date with the latest SEO tactics and Google algorithm changes.

To Outsource or not to Outsource, that is the Question!

Here are some things to consider:

• What’s your budget look like?
  • An outsourced agency can charge from $750 to $2500 a month depending on the services provided. However, you don’t need to worry about payroll or benefits.
  • Having an intern part-time is way less expensive, however, you forfeit experience and marketing savviness. (By the way, if the intern is not getting college credit, you have to pay them.)
  • If hiring a full-time employee, you have to consider salary and benefits. However, you have more control over them.
  • Train an existing employee. Please don’t tell your receptionist or office manager that they’re going to start doing social media marketing, too! They need to be trained to do it properly. Are they creative? Can they write up a blog or tell a story? Can they create an eye-catching promotional post that generates leads?
  • Learn how to do it all yourself! If you learn how to properly use the tools, you have total control of your marketing. It takes more time upfront between learning and building a following. However, once a following is built, you can manage it in 30-60 minutes a day (besides blogging).
  • Yet another option is a hybrid plan. Hire an expert to get you set up, plan and build your following, while you learn how to use the tools, then take over.
• You need to be a little social savvy yourself so you know what they’re doing is proper and effective.
• Whether inside or outsourced, they should provide you with comprehensive monthly reports (at least) with analytics and insights to see what’s working and not working. Strategic and tactical plans should then be adjusted based on the report.

All in all, today’s digital marketing IS complicated if you are clueless. It’s OK to be clueless. Especially since all this stuff changes constantly. That’s where I come in. I can guide you or train you in whatever you need for YOUR business. If you don’t need to be on Instagram or any other network, I’ll tell you so.

Not sure which way to proceed? Click here to schedule a free 15-minute consultation.

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If your budget is really tight, then learn how to do it yourself with my ebook as a guide! Yes, it will take some sweat-equity up front, but just like learning a new software program, the more you use it, the faster it will take you to get something done. Moreover, the benefit is more leads and more sales!

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