- Social media has been the primary source for building brand awareness across 2020-2021 and reliance will only continue over the next decade
- To be competitive, brands need to become smarter around social media management, how they execute their social media strategy and allocate their resources to it.
- Chatter Digital says that a hybrid approach to social media management will be essential to ensure success and cost effective implementation.
When we think of social media we often think of viral posts that make us laugh and images of our favourite celebrities.
Business brands are competing in the same digital space for the attention of audiences and so they too must ensure their social media content is appealing and engaging. Not all businesses can afford global celebrities to represent them, so their strategy needs to be far more focused and targeted so that it can align with their budget. This is where a smart approach to social media management is important.
Creating and executing a social media strategy for a business is a lot of work. The average small business owner spends anywhere between 5-10 hours per week actively working on social media management. That is a large percentage of available time each week considering everything else a business owner needs to do.
According to Indeed, the average salary of a social media manager in the US is $46,681 p.a. or $17.51 per hour so it is a serious commitment to employ someone on it full-time or even part-time.
The good news is that there is a way to significantly bring down this cost and make executing a social media strategy easier. The answer: Outsourcing
Even if you already have a full time Social Media Specialist in your organisation, it doesn’t mean they have to do everything. It is about using their skills to do the more intimate or complex tasks, while outsourcing some of the simpler, more repetitive tasks to a social media content agency who can do it all to a high standard and at a fraction of the cost due to their experience, access to tools and economies of scale.
What are the best social media management tasks to outsource?
Now, you don’t need to outsource full creative licence until you have confidence that your business and brand goals are well understood. But what you can do is provide a social media content agency the key topics, products or services you want them to focus on and then let them do all the grunt work – freeing up your time and allowing you to execute these tasks at a lower cost per hour than your own rate.
Below are 5 social media management tasks you should certainly look to outsource.
1. Social Media Content Writing
Let your social media content agency do all the grunt work to analyse your industry and competitors, create your post captions and research the best hashtag to use. It will be a massive weight off your mind and all you need to do is review and approve what they produce.
Whether you need a one off pack of 15 social media posts, or an ongoing social media content creation plan, you will find companies that offer solutions for a range of needs and budgets.
2. Social Media Post Designs
When you run a business, you have to think about a lot of things; Your customers, your suppliers, your finances, your marketing, your growth strategy. That takes up a lot of brain power and it doesn’t leave you time to get your creative juices flowing to put together Instagram or Facebook designs for your next post.
A good social media management agency will have a team of creative experts to take care of this for you. Not only that, they have access to a wide range of paid tools that you are simply not going to be paying for yourself as a small business. It makes sense to tap into the tools and resources of a social media management company.
3. Social Media Post Engagement
You need to do more than post content on your social media accounts. Engagement activities are an essential part of the strategy. That means you need to be liking, sharing and commenting on other peoples posts to be more visible and to develop relationships with prospective customers.
This is a labour intensive task but with the right job description or brief, this is a task that you can outsource cost effectively without taking up any of your own time. Using a social media agency will ensure your engagement activities are done well and with a clear purpose and endgame in mind.
Chatter Digital is a social media management agency that offers social media engagement services at a low hourly rate.
4. Manual Outreach and Messaging
Similar to post engagement, manual outreach refers to contacting your prospective customers through messaging that are available on the various social media platforms.
Many businesses fall into the trap of trying to do this in bulk with little personalisation. This makes your message feel spammy and reply rates will be low, or worse yet, the messages will be flagged as spam by the social platform.
Professional outreach services use a social media management specialist to research the prospect and engage them with a relevant message. A good social media outsourcing strategy is to get someone to do all this initial messaging and research for you, then come in and take over the conversation when there is a reply. It will save you a huge amount of time and is really effective.
5. Audience and Community Growth
Growing your audience can happen with good content and regular engagement, but there are other things you can do to accelerate how fast your audience and community can grow. One strategy is to compliment your content by following people or pages who fall within your target market.
When you follow someone they are notified, which in turn gets them interested to see who you are. If your content is good then they will likely follow you back.
One important caveat on this strategy – doing it in bulk can result in your page being banned, so a natural approach is a must. Don’t over do it! Outsourcing this to someone who knows what they are doing.
You may be tempted to unfollow anyone who doesn’t follow you back. Do this naturally as well as you don’t want the social platform to think you are using bots to cheat the system by following and unfollowing in quick succession. Always do it naturally and you won’t have any issues.
Conclusion on outsourcing social media management tasks
In a nutshell, small business owners need to seriously consider outsourcing as much of their social media management work as possible. Do what makes sense in-house and outsource the rest. As the business expert, get involved only when it is necessary when your skills are going to be useful such as closing a sale or fine tuning some messaging.
You certainly do not need to be spending 20-40 hours a week on labour intensive work. Use this time to work on other areas of your business.
There are a number of ways to outsource social media management, but if you want to have peace of mind, then using a social media agency is the way to go.
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