How to outsource your social media

Social media one of the best ways of marketing for many businesses. However, it does take time – time that you might not have available. It’s becoming more common for business owners to outsource their social media management – in fact, internet marketing company Hubspot reckons outsourcing of social media has risen by 128% in the last two years.

However, to successfully outsource your social media you still need to be involved. Here are some of the elements you can outsource – and our views on the bits you should keep inhouse.

BLOGGING
Blogging is one of the most effective ways to use social media to market your business. It demonstrates your expertise, raises your profile and drives traffic to your website. Outsourcing your blog writing means you get relevant, unique content for your website without any hassle. You can be as little or as much involved as you like, too – you can give your outsourced blogger bullet points to work from, or suggest topics and keywords – or let them plan a schedule of relevant articles that they’ll research and write from scratch.

DESIGN
Now that everyone is using social media it’s important you stand out – which means making your social media profiles look great. A professional designer can create custom wallpaper for your Twitter profile and source or design the perfect “cover photo” for your Facebook page, to make sure you stand out from the competition.

ANALYTICS
It’s important to keep an eye on how well social media is working for you. Google Analytics is fantastic for monitoring how many people visit your site, where they come from and what they look at – but it can be confusing to use if you’re not familiar with it. Think about outsourcing your analytics to someone who understands the layout – the time you win back will more than cover the cost.

RESEARCH AND MONITORING
Research and monitoring is vital to get the best out of social media. You need to monitor the competition so you know that they’re doing – and monitor mentions of your own name, so you can deal quickly with any feedback. And finding relevant people to follow, in the hope that they’ll follow you back, takes research, as does finding the right keywords and topics to blog about. Again these are areas that can be easily outsourced.

UPDATES
OK this is the area where we don’t feel you should completely outsource the work. Social media is all about engaging with people, building relationship and getting to know your followers. It’s not about blasting out sales messages but looking out for ways to help other people. And it’s something you need to keep doing – tweeting once in a blue moon is a waste of time. So how do you do that, when you’re busy running a business? Well our solution is to outsource some of your updates. Let someone set up regular updates that give tips and hints, lead people to useful information on your website or reference relevant news stories. Then you get involved by joining in the social conversations as and when you have the time – perhaps spending some time in the morning and another 30 minutes in the evening. That way you have regular content going out, which keeps you in people’s minds, but you also engage with people on a conversational level – a win win situation all round.

If you’re interested in outsourcing some of your social media give us a call on 01793 608777 for a chat.