What if your company had the greatest story in the world but no one would ever hear it?
Marketing is a key component in letting the world know about your company and its products and services. And social media marketing is an organic way to grow an audience while turning your biggest fans into “word of mouth” advertisers.
However, not every company has the time, experience, or energy to run their own social media accounts. And this is where social media outsourcing comes in.
Wondering what outsourcing your social media can do for your company? Keep reading to find out!
Dedicated Narrative
You know better than anyone that your company is more than the products that you sell. Instead, your company has a unique and compelling story that the world is just waiting to hear.
With someone else managing your social media, you’ll go beyond sales (more on this in a minute). You’ll have someone who understands the vision behind your company and knows how to bring it to life, one meme and hashtag at a time.
If you want to get a great story, you hire great storytellers. The same wisdom applies to a great social media account.
Expert Help
If you’re on the fence about outsourcing your social media, just ask yourself: what’s the alternative?
For most companies, the only alternative is giving that task to an existing employee. And such employees may not be experts in social media, much less in social communication.
Outsourcing is about getting the right tools for the job. You get the benefit of a true expert instead of gambling that an employee has been hiding some social media skills.
Saving Time
It’s a common mistake to think that making professional posts on social media takes very little time. Even if your own social media accounts have a lot of “fire and forget” posts, a corporate account takes a lot of time to research, plan, and maintain.
If you don’t outsource, where does all the time go? The answer is that someone else must do all of the planning and posting, and most likely at the expense of their primary job.
Therefore, relying on the existing staff for your social media marketing is a “lose/lose” idea. You’re going to get someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing and no longer has time to focus on what you hired them for.
Saving Money
For companies that don’t want to outsource and don’t want to make an existing employee manage the account, there is another alternative: hiring an in-house social media guru.
While there are many benefits to having someone on-site, this also means you must pay for an additional salary and employee benefits. Many companies cannot afford to do this.
However, the brilliance of outsourcing is that you get as much as you need and only pay for what you get. Why pay an in-house person for 40 hours a week when you can pay an outsourced expert for 10 hours a week?
In this way, you get all the benefits of a managed social media account and actually end up saving money.
Outside the Sales Box
There is another problem with making an existing sales or marketing person handle social media: they will treat every post like a sales pitch.
Modern consumers are very savvy, and they don’t like non-stop advertisements. If your social media account is one big commercial, then they will stop following your account in a heartbeat.
However, outsourced experts know how to do more than make a sale. They can build a community around your brand that relies on you for quality content.
This leads to the kind of consumer loyalty that earns sales through relationships and not simply marketing.
Platform Pioneers
Here’s an open secret: not every social media platform is the same. And different demographics use different platforms in very unique ways.
There are apps that let you post to multiple platforms at once. However, this isn’t making the most out of what makes each platform unique.
When you outsource social media management, you get actual platform experts. This means a real Twitter guru can handle your Twitter account, an Instagram guru can handle your Insta, and so on.
Like we said above, social media marketing is about creating and maintaining relationships with your consumers. If your posts look generic, then users will move on to an account that is offering more content.
Real Brand Voice
Two questions: does your company have a brand voice? And do customers know exactly what this voice is?
In short, a brand voice gives customers a way to understand and relate to your content. And it also helps them to see even large companies as a friend they enjoy hanging out within a digital space.
Examples of online brand voices include Greggs’ confident and playful twitter account and Innocent Drinks quirky and creative social media. Each one uses a different kind of humour to entice people to follow their accounts.
In most cases, direct advertising is unnecessary. Seeing Greggs being funny and sassy is an advertisement in and of itself to the account’s dedicated followers.
Time-Sensitive
Social media moves at its own speed. And let us tell you: that speed is blindingly fast!
When someone tags your account or messages you a question, they are expecting an almost immediate response. And if you don’t have someone managing your social media, that may be impossible to achieve.
It takes a lot of work and dedication to provide immediate responses to customer engagement. But those fast responses develop a loyalty to your online account, and that translates to loyalty to your offline products.
Social Media Management: The Bottom Line
Now you know the benefits of outsourcing for your social media management needs. But do you know where to find the kinds of experts that you need?
At We Do Stories, we specialise in blending marketing and storytelling to help the world discover what companies have to offer. And to discover how we can help with your social media marketing, just contact us today!
