You need to determine whether you should continue doing your own social media marketing, or whether it is time to hand it off to someone else. There are many factors that go into determining if you need assistance. Here are some of the factors to consider:.
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 would 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 difficult.
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 are deciding whether or not it is 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 taking up a lot of your time and detracting you 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 are constantly checking Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter for updates, chances are that it is 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 handing off that activity.
Who Can You Outsource To?
This is really the all-important question. If you are not doing your social media marketing, who is?
Do you hand it off to someone overseas for three dollars 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 must 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 is distracting you 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 the perspective of a voice and a brand.
