You’d think social media management would be easy.

After all, it’s just a couple of posts a week and a little bit of online engagement, right?

You wish.

Social media management alone can be a full-time job. It demands forethought and planning, a good reading of the market and a savvy sense of timing.

For a business to stay relevant and competitive, its social media output needs to be regular and consistent. It’s an obligation that requires constant attention, real-time analysis and adjustment.

Its demands on your time can be significant, especially if your business is active across multiple social media platforms. Think you can handle that?

A question, then: Would you outsource social media?

Thousands of businesses outsource routinely. When there are too many tasks to juggle, outsourcing lends the extra hands to share the workload.

Sure, there are risks. But, as you shall see, the benefits outweigh them by quite some margin.  

Outsourcing your social media to a skilled content creator and social media manager, in particular, can have transformative effects on businesses lacking market presence.

Someone on hand to focus exclusively on social media management learns the algorithms, observes the market and watches the competition before a single post is uploaded.

The necessary quality and volume of social media can only be achieved if the right amount of time and attention is given to it.

In this blog, we’ll look at the various benefits and challenges you can expect when you outsource social media marketing. Along the way, we will offer some tips on how to outsource social media that is both effective and loyal to your brand voice.  

Why Social Media Matters for Your Business

Boosting Your Brand

The economy is contracting, and the high street is almost gone. More people are staying home, browsing the web and making purchases.

So, their attention is at a premium. To get that attention, your business needs to be discoverable.

A well-targeted social media campaign selects its brand’s strengths. Some platforms fit more snuggly than others.

For example…

Facebook’s advanced targeting options (and its billions of active users) may be a buffet of opportunity for most businesses, but Instagram caters more to the visually minded (like those in fashion, beauty and other lifestyle industries).

 X (formally Twitter) is the premier platform for conversation and relationship building, while LinkedIn is a goldmine for B2B companies looking to connect with industry leaders and decision-makers.

If positioned well, your brand should thrive in such a platform-rich

environment.

A report by HubSpot revealed that 87% of companies using “social selling” reported it has been beneficial for their businesses, while sales professionals closed 40-50% more new business than those who did not use social selling.

Consider that nearly 5 billion people worldwide are actively engaged with social media, with the average user accessing between 6 and 7 platforms per month!

When you choose to outsource social media, it can be a little uncomfortable at first. Letting a stranger take charge of your socials is a leap of faith. But times have changed, as have the methods and language of modern commerce.

It’s important that businesses move with the times. The opportunities in online marketing are vast and potentially very profitable. So, investing in social media is a business priority. As the old saying goes, “If you are not seen, you don’t exist.”

Engaging With Your Audience

It’s not enough to open multiple accounts on the major platforms and upload some content once in a while.

Social media is an unending commitment that evolves with social changes and market demand.

Keeping profiles up to date and optimised tells your audience that your business has something valuable to offer in the current moment.

Staying on top of fast-moving trends gives you an edge. Global and local events or even the changing seasons are signals to respond. Funny and topical memes, Christmas giveaways or commemorating a national sports victory tells your audience that you’re paying attention, you’re fully engaged and always open for business. Using social media to reflect things your audience recognises in their daily lives builds interest and empathy.   

Careful, though…

Brands with distinctive identities run the risk of inconsistency when playing around with ideas. If a new post looks, feels or sounds different from the preceding one, you’ve probably drifted too far from your brand style guide. Consistency in all your social media output must be maintained throughout.

Making an effort to know your audience and valuing their opinions or concerns builds brand trust, reliability and loyalty.

A brand’s social media presence must always be approachable. A social media manager must always be eager to engage in comment threads, respond to likes and shares, and deal with objections (in a faultlessly polite manner, of course).

Following other people’s accounts not only flatters the followers but also communicates genuine reciprocity and relatability. Where bigger brands can seem distant, unapproachable or even arrogant, brands that engage people no matter their station in society can build powerful support networks from the “grassroots”.  

Affiliations with influencers or other businesses can boost your reach dramatically. New audiences can emerge from all kinds of secondary sources, benefitting you and the groups you are affiliated with.

Paid social media advertising allows you to target specific audiences. This is particularly helpful for niche businesses whose audiences may be atypical and underserved.

Driving Sales

But it doesn’t happen like magic. Cranking up the volume of output won’t have much effect if it is not targeted. If you choose to outsource social media to a specialist, they will understand the target audience well enough to push the right buttons.

Put simply, social media will increase your website traffic, and you will have more sales.

Demographics, tastes and preferences, hobbies and interests, and notable patterns of behaviour are all blended to create a “customer avatar” (or customer profile).

Understanding who your customers are and what they want forms the basis of a strong social media strategy.

Ads can be targeted with better accuracy, converting a greater number of people in a shorter space of time.

Imagine your website is a sales hub that pumps social media content through a tube connected to the internet. Then that content shoots off in different directions, funnelling into the platforms spread around the web.

Each platform becomes a sales channel where educational or entertaining content can be filtered through via images, video clips or linked articles.

Demonstration videos and testimonials can be conveyed with social media content, answering all the questions a prospect might have about your product or service and reassuring them that a long line of happy customers precedes them.

Positioning your business as a market leader comes from persistent social media engagement. Demonstrating how your brand solves your prospect’s problems with useful content gives them the confidence to act. Using social media to address possible objections removes any doubt or inhibitions standing in the way of a sale.

Social media marketing is also cost-effective. You can market through social media without worrying about your return on investment. Uploading a post onto Facebook is far cheaper than renting a billboard in Times Square. As bustling as New York may be, it cannot compare to the millions of hungry eyes glued to the internet in every corner of the world.

Another study from HubSpot discovered that 84% of businesses increased their traffic dramatically with just 6 hours of social media publishing per week!

Have we mentioned you can outsource social media yet?

The Struggle of Doing Social Media In-House

Time-Sucking Tasks

We get it. Social media management can be a pain. If you’re a small business where everything is produced in-house, it’s likely most of your staff will be juggling many tasks at once already.

The social media output of any business leads from the front and engages the public while the team sweat through the day behind closed doors.

With tight deadlines, time allocation is super-important. Regardless of the workload and the limited time available, social media must be managed by somebody.

Expertise Gaps

When you outsource social media marketing, you give yourself access to a unique skill set that blends detailed research, creativity and direct customer engagement into your marketing game.  

For most in-house businesses, each team member will have their speciality but might not be well suited to the demands of social media. During busy times, a business owner may delegate social media tasks to a designer, a copy editor or the apprentice who makes the coffee.

If a teammate is off sick, someone is going to be saddled with social media duties, no matter their suitability. This can lead to weak and unfocused posts that can harm the public perception of the business.

Juggling Resources

The slightest glitch can throw a project off balance. A technical problem or a stubborn client can add extra pressure and stress, resulting in rushed work and missed deadlines.

In these situations, social media can be neglected or executed in a careless manner. A graphic designer responding to comments on Instagram isn’t the best use of that person’s time, especially if there’s still unfinished client work on the drawing board. Not so if you outsource social media.

Keeping Up With Trends

There is nothing worse than an unannounced algorithm update. This can throw a solid social media strategy off course. Months of progress can be lost if you haven’t noticed where your traffic is going. If engagement suddenly falls away, chances are a new trend is gaining momentum and drawing your audience away.

AI is having its moment in the sun. It signals the birth of a radical new age that is as exciting as it is unnerving.

So common is its usage that businesses that fail to adopt AI, even in part, risk leaving a lot of money on the table.

It is not a trend’s job to stand still so you can catch up with it. Trends favour businesses that keep a close eye on social spaces and catch new novelties as and when they emerge.

Speaking of trends…

The short-form video is the new kid in town. TikTok, the pioneer of short-form video, has more than a billion global users thanks to its punchy, bite-sized content.

TikTok has also become the search engine of choice for Gen Z. Its sheer volume and variety of content means that Google Maps has some serious competition.

The social media manager’s task is to bend emergent trends to the benefit of your business goals, extracting as much value as possible while staying true to your brand colours, voice and style.

Have we tempted you to outsource social media yet?

Why Outsourcing Social Media Could Be a Game-Changer

Getting Expert Help

When you outsource, you want a professional who lives and breathes social media. They will not see it as a job but rather as an extension of something they already enjoy.

The injection of outside talent offers a new perspective lacking in closed-off workspaces. Internet land never sleeps, and social interactivity is constant and changing. But you have to be available to see it.

The social media manager is the link between the business and the outside world. While in-house staff are shut away for long hours baking under LED lights, the social media manager watches for emerging trends and shifts public opinion in real time.

These shifts are packed with possibilities otherwise missed by the folks in the office.

Some new TikTok sound or filter may seem unrelated to the interests of your business, but a clever social media manager can twist these features to create dynamic short-form videos or memes that mirror your business goals.

This kind of “thinking outside the box” gives your business an edge that can work to your advantage.

Social media managers are lateral thinkers who can identify novel routes of attack, developing strategies that are current and highly targeted.

Saving Money

Outsourcing a social media manager needn’t be expensive. For bigger businesses with bigger budgets, the pool of talent is vast. For smaller businesses with smaller budgets, there are still plenty of options. 

If you are a London-based business, hiring someone full-time locally can be pricey. So why not try a remote social media agency to handle social media for you? The level of expertise and professionalism will be just as stellar but at a lower cost.

Though keeping social media in-house has its advantages, hiring and training someone internally can be costly. If a social media campaign fails, the blame falls on the business, whereas if you outsource social media, the responsibility is theirs. When the stakes are high and reputation is on the line, external companies generally produce strong and professional work.

Freeing Up Your Time

Social media management involves numerous time-consuming activities like posting, engaging with followers, and monitoring comments and messages. If you outsource social media to a specialist agency, this gives your business a chance to offload the daily grind of social media maintenance, freeing up time for more relevant tasks.

Creating, curating, and scheduling posts chews up the hours and demands lots of mental energy. The social media manager eliminates the problem of staff dropping important jobs to keep social media output flowing. Giving your staff the extra breathing space keeps morale and productivity high. The quality of your deliverables will be proof enough of that.

Consistent, Quality Content

As a business owner, you look for ways to reduce stress, not just for yourself but for your employees. The thought of tackling social media duties on top of your client commitments is too chilling a prospect to think about.

But you can relax…

The social media manager’s domain is ring-fenced from every other business concern. No other task is expected to be fulfilled except social media.

This means that time can be spent learning algorithms, studying competitor behaviour, building community relationships, setting content calendars and scheduling, publishing posts across social media channels, and monitoring and optimising when necessary.

There is time to stockpile posts in advance so the tempo of uploads remains consistent no matter what snags lay ahead.

The quality of each post will be the sum total of all the research and effort put in beforehand. This quality can also be sustained at higher volumes, even at short notice. This is where pre-planning, focus and organisation really pay off.

No new trend escapes the eagle eye of the social media manager, who is always there to spot opportunities. This keeps your brand in lockstep with the twists and turns of an ever-changing marketplace.

As an innovator, the social media manager can create features that become trends, at least potentially. Though you can never predict what becomes popular, it’s worth remembering that all trends originate from somewhere.

Access to Professional Tools

Like a surgeon, the social media agency has a range of bespoke tools to perform all kinds of delicate operations.

A social media agency can use specialist tools for:

• Scheduling and management

• Analytics and reporting

• Content creation and design

• Social listening and monitoring

• Community and customer management

• Influencer marketing

• Ad management and automation

• Collaboration and project management

Such tools help social media managers optimise their postings from the back-end and the front, from content creation and posting to monitoring, reporting, and influencer collaboration.

Myths About Outsourcing Social Media

Losing Control of Your Brand

“If I outsource social media, I’ll lose my authority.”

Not true. As the boss, you would obviously want progress reports to ensure you’re getting a return on your investment. Of course, the social media manager doesn’t want you standing over their shoulder, but you’ll want to touch base with each other on a monthly basis. There’s no reason to fear losing control of your social media strategy as long as communication is maintained. In the end, you are the owner of your business, and you have the last word.

Outsourcing Is Just for Big Business

Traditionally, it was larger businesses that would outsource social media marketing due to the scale and complexity of operations: numerous departments, fleets of staff, multiple branch locations and so on.

However, the fundamentals of outsourcing are the same at any scale.

An ever-growing number of SMEs and start-ups have turned to third-party specialists to outsource some of their core roles. In fact, it’s easier for small businesses with fewer employees, fewer departments and one location to outsource social media marketing.

Since all businesses have equal access to the internet, the opportunity to reach big audiences is right there for businesses, both big and small.

It’s Too Expensive

On the contrary, outsourcing social media can save you up to 10 times the cost of hiring in-house.

For SMEs and start-ups with limited budgets, costs can be kept low, ranging from £150 to £600 per month. This would typically feature basic content creation and, in some cases, community management. A small amount of advertising would incur additional costs.

Medium-sized businesses with around £1,500-£3,500 to spend can expect a more extensive social media package featuring advanced content creation, broader community interaction, targeted advertising and analytics.

Compared to hiring or training a salaried individual in-house, outsourcing to an agency is more cost-effective in the long run.

Shop around for someone with the expertise who fits within the confines of your budget. You want a quality social media manager who can bring you a healthy return on investment, so laying down the extra cash is worth it if you have it.

How To Outsource Social Media the Right Way

Know What You Need

You already know that something is not quite right; otherwise, you wouldn’t be looking for help.

The first thing to do is perform an audit of your social media. Identify strengths and weaknesses matched against your business expectations and the performance of your competitors. Bear in mind this isn’t easy if you lack the sober objectivity of an outsider looking in.  

Figure out what you want. Set realistic targets and goals and work from a timeline that suits your situation. Do this before you reach out to a third party so you can find the right person for the job. 

Set a Budget

Your audit will help you set a realistic budget. Consider your previous marketing spend to estimate how much you should invest this time around. Refer to your expenses from the earlier periods and divide them by the various digital marketing schemes you employed. From there, allocate a good chunk of your budget to your new social media strategy.

You will encounter a variety of pricing models depending on who you approach to outsource social media. Some agency staff will charge an hourly, daily or monthly rate. When you’re testing the water, these pricing options are good. But once you’re convinced you’ve got the ideal social media manager, longer-term subscriptions and retainers are a great way to keep that talent from escaping.

Pick the Right Partner

So, how do you choose an agency or freelancer to outsource social media to? It’s no less important than choosing a babysitter. Your business — and its projected image in the online space — lives or dies by how it’s perceived.

Firstly, do they understand the nature of your industry? And have they worked with similar businesses before?

You need evidence of the agency’s track history. Look for a strong portfolio that demonstrates experience, creativity and skill, especially if it’s related to a business similar to yours. Find evidence of successful campaigns with supporting metrics. Look at testimonials and follow the links to verify how genuine they are.

Also, see how these skills play out across different platforms and how varied and adaptable they are when engaging different audiences. You can gauge their communication skills quickly by how they interact with you during the vetting process. It’s not just about reading customer responses on comment threads. You are a customer, too.

Above all, they have to KNOW your audience. Can they honour and maintain your brand voice across multiple platforms without alienating or losing people?  

Get It in Writing

Make sure you have a clear written agreement of what is expected of both contracting parties beforehand.

In the contract, define the scope of work by making clear what the social media agency is responsible for and the deliverables they are expected to provide.

Set a definitive timeline for when the contract starts and ends, factoring in deadline details that may or may not allow for extensions and so on.   

Clarify payment terms, pay schedule and any other financial specifics.

Include a confidentiality clause to protect sensitive information from being shared or published by unknown third parties.

State clearly the terms of a contract’s termination, laying out the consequences for breaching any pre-agreed responsibilities.

Check and sign the contract so there is a mutual understanding of each other’s contractual obligations.

Stay Connected

When you outsource social media, it’s essential you set expectations for regular progress reporting. Whether it’s monthly or quarterly reporting, work out a consistent schedule to discuss social media metrics and upcoming plans.

Make sure that emails are answered quickly so as not to slow momentum or foster doubt or confusion. For lengthier campaigns, aim to have detailed quarterly reports to make sure your social media strategy is meeting its long-term objectives. 

There are a variety of tools available to facilitate smooth communication and feedback between you and your social media agency:

• Slack is good for real-time communication and quick updates.

• Google Drive/Dropbox — This is for sharing and collaborating on content, reports and files in real time.

• Canva — This is for co-creating and reviewing visual content with built-in feedback tools.

• Hootsuite/Buffer — This is for scheduling posts and tracking performance with reporting features.

• Zoom/Microsoft Teams — This is for virtual meetings and detailed discussions.

Working Well With Your Outsourced Team

Collaborate, Don’t Dictate

An experienced social media manager is not simply an employee who receives and executes a list of instructions.

The role is multi-faceted, blending a variety of specialist skills that take many years to cultivate.

A keen creative eye is one thing, but the ability to interpret and organise data is another. Also, the ability to adapt communication styles to “meet people where they are” is a skill that is hard to find. This is garnered through lots of experience engaging with a wide range of audiences.

Many social media managers have a talent for punchy copy, arguably the most overlooked skill in their repertoire. Having a de facto copywriter on board will work wonders for Facebook ads and conversation-starters on comment boards.

So, yes, social media managers deserve respect. They are not employees but rather collaborators and consultants that can bring you enormous success.

Keep Them in the Loop

Always keep your social media manager updated with business promotions or strategy changes. The work that goes into planning and structuring campaigns is a delicate art informed by real-time analytics, social listening and precise timing. Sudden strategy changes can cause havoc, undoing months of careful work.

Changes should be communicated and justified ahead of time so the social media manager can factor them into the campaign with little disruption.

If you do outsource social media, know when to intervene and when to stay back.

Encourage Creativity

A quality social media manager will bring years of experience into the role, drawing from a wide variety of campaign trends and formats from many different industries.

Don’t place rigid limitations on the social media manager. Encourage the spirit of risk and experimentation. As long as the data supports the idea, it’s more than likely that your social media manager has spotted a unique way to grab attention and bring in some serious traffic.

Conclusion

If you’re a business tempted to outsource social media marketing,

It’s a wise move.

Here are some of the benefits you’ll gain when outsourcing your social media:

• You have access to the expertise and specialisation of people who produce effective content strategies by interpreting analytics. They understand platform algorithms and bend them to your advantage.

• An experienced social media manager creates fresh and innovative content tailored to your brand, attracting a broader audience appeal.

• You save time by allocating the work to someone else. This means you can focus attention on other aspects of your business without carrying the burden of maintaining your social media presence.

• Outsourcing to professionals means that content is posted consistently, campaigns are properly managed, and community engagement is maintained, all without consuming internal resources.

• You also save money when you outsource social media. Hiring full-time staff to manage social media is more expensive than outsourcing to an agency. Outsourcing can save on costs related to salaries, benefits and training.

• Social media managers often use premium tools for scheduling, analytics, and reporting, which may not be feasible for a business to purchase in-house.

• They can analyse performance data, identify trends and adjust strategies based on real-time insights, optimising campaigns to dramatic effect.

• They can manage engagement, customer inquiries and crisis situations around the clock, ensuring a quicker response to comments and messages.

So, there it is…

We’ve explored the ins and outs of social media outsourcing, and hopefully, you feel equipped to jump in and reap the many benefits waiting for you. When you outsource social media, you put your business where the action is.

The dynamism of the online market is there to be engaged with. A dedicated social media agency will position your brand right in the faces of your competitors, always present, always relevant and always ready to engage.

Use the tips featured above to get started. Choose someone who understands your brand voice and identity, identifies with your short and long-term objectives, and speaks to your audience like a friend.

Do you want to light a fire under your social media output? Boost your online presence and make fantastic gains? Then, take a look at our social media packages or get in touch to see how we can transform your social media.