Social Media Marketing: In-house or outsource?
Posted by Brian Snider
Social media marketing is all about developing more personal relationships with customers, so on the surface it doesn't make any sense whatsoever to outsource your social media marketing efforts. You want people who know your business, who are intimately involved in it, and these same people should have a real stake in the business.
Yet marketing through social media takes time, and lots of it. Many companies until recently considered social media sites as time sinks, and it was often company policy among many businesses just a few years ago to ban employees from going onto Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and other social media sites. That has changed as businesses realize the true scope of the marketing opportunities that social media presents.
Before exploring whether to have an employee conduct a marketing campaign through social media or getting someone outside the company to do it, a business should take a look at what they hope to accomplish through using it for marketing. Bigger businesses can utilize social media to create a friendlier image to the public and to relate on a more personal level with their customers. Small businesses can benefit too by expanding their reach without sinking a lot of money into an advertising campaign, though the time it takes for an employee to effectively market should be considered in this as well.
Big businesses can designate a whole team of people to interact with a company's customers on social media sites. They can also afford to hire people who are experts in social media marketing. A small business may find that one of their employees with experience in the area may be the best for the job.
For example, a couple hours a day will allow John, who has been on Facebook for a couple years and who has thousands of friends but who mainly just plays Mafia Wars and Farmville, to promote the business. Perhaps you can see where this is heading...
Who will more efficiently achieve a company's business objectives? That is the key question that any business needs to answer before considering whether its employees or an outside consultant should run a company's social media marketing campaign.
There are benefits and drawbacks to both scenarios. Perhaps ABC Social Media Marketing Consultants has a flashy website and an impressive clientele, but most of their staff are actually college drop outs who figured out how to grow networks but know very little else about social media, or the companies for which ABC works for that matter. Nor do they particularly care. Then suppose that Lisa, a company salesperson, has used Twitter to effectively increase her own sales. Which person will do a better job? Now, you could say that taking a couple hours a day away from Lisa's sales position could decrease the company's sales. Yet looking at it from a more long term perspective, Lisa knows the company, knows the products the company produces, and her enthusiasm for social media and the company are intertwined, making her a logical choice.
The truth is, if a business has someone who is savvy about what social media can do to help a business, they should use that person's knowledge when planning to run any social media marketing campaign. At the very least, this person should liaise with whoever ends up running the company's social media marketing campaign. If outsourcing, then the consultant involved in helping a business promote itself through social media should have an excellent understanding of the company's products/services, and know how to effectively engage with the target audience.
Yet before companies consider strategies regarding social media, they should understand what it does and can do for them. Social media is a little like online customer service that interacts with people in real time, where companies listen to and interact with their customers. Unlike customer service lines, however, where mostly people call with complaints about a product or service, social media engages consumers personally, though without any real expectations. If a company's goals for its social media marketing can be achieved through use of an expert consultant and there is no one in-house with ample experience, then outsourcing should definitely be considered. If, on the other hand, a company has a competent employee or employees with experience, who understand the company's social media marketing vision, and they have the proper amount of time to devote to this effort, then social media marketing should stay in-house.
To put it simply, when considering outsourcing or doing it yourself, it depends on what the company hopes to accomplish with any social media program and what resources are available (both monetary and personal).