Hand over plans, 'social network'

Posted by Cash On on 2012-03-20 0

Should you still be doing your own social media marketing, or is it time to hand it off to someone else? There are many factors that go into whether or not you can hand off your social media. Here are some of
the things to consider when
you’re weighing your
decision.

Is Your Social Marketing
Personality Driven or
Process Driven?
Is your social media primarily driven by you and your personality, or is it primarily driven by processes? One example of personality- driven social media marketing is a comedian. In his case, it’d
be very hard to outsource his social media, because he has such a unique voice. Finding someone who could emulate his voice enough to still build
an audience would be very
tough. An example of process-driven social media marketing might
be an artist or band. The
primary jobs in managing
their social media is
responding to friend requests, deciding which gigs to take and updating the event listings. This is something that could easily be handed off to someone else. When you’re deciding
whether or not it’s time to
hand off your social
marketing, one crucial
question you need to ask
yourself is whether or not you can hand it off without
losing your voice.

How Much Time Is It Taking?
If social media marketing is
sucking up all your time and
detracting from other areas of business that actually
generate income, then it may be time to seriously start looking for ways to
outsource it. If you’re constantly checking
Twitter, Facebook and
MySpace for updates, chances are it’s becoming more of a distraction than a profitable business activity. In fact, if you spend more than ninety minutes on it per day, you should really think about getting that activity off your plate.

Who Can You Outsource
To?

This is really the all-important question. If you’re not doing your social media marketing, who is? Do you hand it off to someone in India for $3 an hour? Or do you hand it off to someone on your staff who really understands the spirit of your company? Again, the issue really comes down to how important the voice is. If people come to your social network pages expecting to get constant updates from your unique voice, then you really need to carefully select your social media managers. If managing your social media is mostly technical, then you can hire anyone with the capability to do it. In short, it is absolutely worth thinking about outsourcing your social media marketing when it gets to the point that it’s distracting from
other more productive activities. Put special attention on what your visitors expect when they visit your pages and who can actually replace you from a voice and brand
perspective.