You can outsource social media marketing to an individual or a team to build your brand. As your brand grows, so will your reputation, reach, and revenue. Just make sure that you know how to hire for the job, especially if you’re looking for remote talent working from another country.
What Is Social Media Marketing (SMM)?
Social media marketing (SMM) uses social media platforms, also known as networks, for brand building. These platforms are where the majority of today’s consumers go to share information. Many brands have developed a presence on these networks. They have also successfully driven traffic from there to their websites and increased their sales.
An effective social media marketing campaign involves these key elements.
Profile
Your profile includes your profile picture (photo of the face of the company or the logo), your bio (a description, company slogan or tagline), your company name, and important links. You can think of your profile as the summary of who you are as a business.
Content
Content is the lifeblood of your social media profile and marketing efforts. This is where you communicate your branding through images, videos, and short-form content like reels and stories. The way you curate content should be optimized to attract your target audience.
Engagement
This is one thing makes social media marketing so valuable. You can respond to interactions on your posts (likes, comments, shares) and gauge the performance of a particular post or content strategy as a whole. You can also follow other brands, influencers, and customers in order to build a community around your brand.
Paid Advertising
While organic social media advertising is ideal, paid advertising can help facilitate organic results. Paid advertising allows your brand to get in front of more people. Through various algorithms and targeting tools, your ideal customers are able to see these ads.
How Will Outsourcing Social Media Marketing Help My Business?
Social media marketing can benefit your business greatly. You can get your brand in front of more people than you would have otherwise. You can gain a greater level of customer interaction and engagement, too. Furthermore, you can get access to valuable customer data via SMM tools. This data will help you optimize your SMM strategies.
If you’re wanting to start social media marketing but don’t have the time, have a limited budget, or limited personnel, then outsourcing social media might be the solution for you.
Let’s go through the benefits of deciding to outsource social media.
What Are The Pros of Outsourcing SMM?
Saves Time
Building and maintaining social media marketing strategies can take up a lot of hours. Think about it.
- Content creation itself requires a lot of time. You need to come up with engaging material, take the time to create each piece, and maintain a constant stream of this content to keep your customers engaged. We actually know of at least 7 reasons you should outsource content marketing.
- Speaking of engagement, a lot of time goes into connecting with customers. It’s important to allocate time to answer comments and interact with your customers.
- Not only that, but you also need to evaluate the efficacy of your strategy and monitor your analytics.
As you can see, SMM is heavy and demands consistent time and effort. Outsourcing social media management, marketing, and content creation means freeing up time for both you and your teams. This way, you can all focus on other core business processes, objectives, and goals. Even if, for instance, you want to keep a foot in content creation efforts, outsourcing social media alleviates a lot of that pressure and workload.
Expert Help
When you outsource social media, you are handing the reins over to a team of qualified professionals. They bring their experience working with other companies and brands and can improve the efficiency of your SMM efforts. They have tried-and-tested processes and strategies. You can even look for people who have worked with businesses similar to yours who can bring valuable industry-specific marketing techniques to the table.
They can build and significantly improve upon the foundation that you’ve started. They can help you boost engagement and connect better with your followers and target customers. Their knowledge and expertise can help you attract your ideal customers and grow your customer base. Their edge can propel you forward ahead of your competitors, too.
Hiring Flexibility
The great thing about outsourcing social media is that you can pick and choose the type of skill or talent you need, when you need it. For instance, let’s say you need to hire a video editor for a single promotional ad that you might need tweaked a few times over the course of half a year. Instead of hiring and paying an editor full-time, you can outsource the job quickly and cut costs significantly.
Outsourcing provides you the flexibility to expand temporarily. If you have to pump out more content for a specific week (like during the launching of a new product for instance) you can outsource content creation for that specific week. No need for full-time staffing or lengthy recruitment and hiring processes.
Saves Money
If you’re familiar with outsourcing, you’ll know that one of the main draws is the cost-cutting benefits. The whole process of recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and maintaining a full-time staff member is pricey. It’s even more costly to hire an entire in-house team. In-house staff maintenance requires you to pay salaries, benefits and other overhead costs like utilities and rent.
Outsourcing social media is much more cost-effective. You pay their rate and potentially some marketplace or agency fees depending on where you hire. Even then, it’s still much cheaper than maintaining full-time in house workers.
Unlock Scaling Potential
When you have more time to focus on core business processes and more funds to spend on growth opportunities, you have the recipe to scale your business and reach your goals faster.
Brand Consistency
Your brand is your identity. When you outsource social media to a professional team, they have the experience and skillsets needed to help you build and maintain your brand image and voice. Through content creation and customer interactions through your posts, they can help you build your online presence and manage the reputation of your company.
Software and Tools
Experts typically come with professional technology. These social media marketers have knowledge and access to technology to better your advertising endeavors. From automation to analytics software, these valuable assets can boost efficiency and bring your SMM to the next level. It also saves you time and money since you don’t have to purchase the software yourself or invest hours learning how to use it.
What Are The Cons of Outsourcing SMM?
Lack of control
Giving over the wheel to a professional team also comes with the caveat that you don’t have as much control. The management role is passed to them, so you have to put your trust in an outside team to handle your brand image. This may be off-putting to some as you also will have difficulty checking the quality of the work being done. This is why it’s important to check their previous projects and portfolios beforehand.
Barriers
If you outsource social media internationally, you could come across some hurdles. For instance, time zones could interfere with content posting schedules. Though there are cases where a vastly different time zone could be beneficial, it could also put a strain on internal communications.
The ability to communicate effectively with your outsourced team is imperative. It’s more than just speaking the same language. There could be differences in values and culture. This is why it’s crucial to make sure your working values align during the hiring/interview process. Otherwise, these could be an obstacle to a smooth working relationship. Mastering virtual communication within your business is a key to productivity and profitability.
Company Culture
The risk of dissonance in this area is greater if the outsourced team is not sufficiently onboarded. You need to make sure that you communicate your company’s mission, vision, values, and culture. This can help your outsourced social media team get a better understanding of how your company communicates to your audience.
You can start by hiring teams that have worked with clients in similar industries. This helps with the general understanding of your industry. Then you need only focus on the messaging and tone of your brand specifically so they can represent your brand as authentically as possible.
Over Reliance
It can be a great help to have someone else take care of your SMM needs. However, there is a risk that you will be too dependent on the outsourced team, especially if you hire them for long-term work. Make sure you have a backup solution available. Maintain flexibility in case you will need to take over some SMM tasks or switch to a different solution.
Where Can I Find Someone to Outsource Social Media Marketing to?
Freelance Marketplaces
Marketplaces such as FreeUp and Fiverr give you access to hundreds of options for your social media marketing needs. You can check their profiles, client reviews, ratings, portfolios, and how much it would cost to hire them.
Agencies
You can outsource your social media marketing needs to an agency that specializes in this area. They typically cost more than freelance marketplace hires, but you get more experience and guarantees. They will likely have worked with more companies and will know what SMM strategy would work best with your company.
Recommendations
If possible, ask for a referral from co-workers, other businesses, or friends who have worked with an SMM team or individual in the past. This way, you have access to first-hand experiences you can trust. They can tell you if the work they do is high quality and what they learned from working with them.
Conclusion
When you outsource social media marketing, it’s important to know know exactly what you need for each task you’re outsourcing. Make sure that you also have safeties in place to avoid the pitfalls and manage the risky areas.
