Social Media becomes more essential for businesses everyday. But is this something that should be done 'in house' or is it a job that can be outsourced to save time for your businesses primary tasks.

1. Do You Work Better In Loud and Noisy
Environments?
By Amanda Watts
www.clientsinabundance.com
OK, this is a slight exaggeration, because sometimes outsourcing your social
media marketing is definitely the way forward. But let me begin my blog post
with a little story of my Social Media Marketing journey.
A fair few years ago I started managing social media accounts for my clients. I
did this at a rate between £300 and £600 a month (and continue with many of
these clients today). This option works so well for my clients but I felt frustrated
at companies who were not taking advantage of outsourcing their social media
and having a slice of the social media pie. I decided to put out a special offer for
£97 a month for social media management and I had clients biting my arm off
for this deal.
I wanted to help them; I wanted to give them an opportunity to have Twitter and
Facebook accounts that were active at least 5 days a week! I wanted them to
have a social media presence. (Have you noticed this was all about what I
wanted)
As there are so many fantastic tools available to help you manage accounts I
knew that with careful planning and forethought I could upload tweets and
Facebook updates for my clients on a weekly basis and give them a presence.
This would take me maximum of an hour a week to write and upload all the
tweets.
Don’t get me wrong, for people who already knew these companies it was great
for their brand awareness. It even gave some of my Clients the opportunity to
get new business. But what I wasn’t doing in earnest was building NEW
friendships, relationships and fans of their business. I was just creating noise.
A couple of years ago this would have been almost acceptable. Social media
wasn’t as busy as it is now.
Why was outsourcing their social media marketing not working?
These companies didn’t have expanding blogs or products to sell, all I was
doing was racking my brains for information to post and linking people back to
websites which were not suitable to be used as a marketing tool. Because they

2. were paying so small amount I had very little interaction with the staff at the
businesses and didn’t nag them enough to let me know what they were doing.
Social Media takes longer than 10 minutes
Alarm bells rung when I was feeling unfulfilled because I wasn’t building
relationships for my clients. I wasn’t helping their business, not in a way I knew
was possible.
For £97 a month they got their monies worth, but really social media cannot be
done in 10 minutes a day. Relationships take time and effort. I knew this, but
my passion for social media marketing lead me down a dangerous path.
I will never offer to run accounts for people unless I can do them justice, and
invest the time and my marketing knowledge to their advantage.
I can’t help everyone. However, if you want to outsource your social media
marketing then you should check the following
• Ensure you have a realistic budget to pay for real engagement to be
created
• Ensure that time has been set for a social media manager to get to know
you and your businesses, properly.
• Ensure your social media manager looks at the bigger marketing picture,
not just social media marketing. There is more to marketing than just
updates.
• Ensure that your website is suitable for data capture, it is important to get
people to sign up and give you their email address.
• Ensure that you have time to help your social media manager with
content, or at least the budget for them to write the content for you.
• Ensure that you understand social media; maybe training is the way
forward before paying someone to manage your accounts.
• You understand that results are not immediate. Just like offline,
friendships and trust take time to develop.
• Ensure your social media manager understand all kinds of marketing, a
good social media marketer will have a marketing or PR background. Be
aware that you get what you pay for in this industry.
• You must check the Twitter and Facebook accounts of your social media
manager. Do they run their accounts well, if not don’t go near them with a
barge pole! They probably just play at social media.
• Ensure that your customers do not just receive white noise, but have
quality engagement with your company representative.
• Check Tweet Grader to see the score of your social media manager.
Enter their username and click grade. They will be graded from 0 to 100.
100 being the highest and the result your are looking for.
So if you have the chance to pay less than £100 a month for your social media
marketing, be aware that 2 hours a month is not a suitable amount of time for
building engagement, trust and potential relationships online. You need quality
content to be written and have quality accounts run. This takes strategic
planning, which takes time and money! But done the right way it will also create
results.

3. If you want to know more about social media then a social media training
course is probably the way forward. At least once you know all the facts you
can outsource your marketing with confidence!
Who should outsource their social media marketing?
Business to Consumer
This is where most success is seen. More often than not you have a product or
service that people will be interested in buying; we are talking pubs,
restaurants, hairdressers, fashion outlets – think anything you need day to day,
and these companies that will thrive on social media.
Business to Business
Get your branding right, have a great blog that installs trust in suppliers and
buyers and you should do well. It takes more understanding of the business and
it is imperative that you stay social and not sell to people! Get it right and you
will thrive, whilst your competitors may only just survive.
Local Companies
Social Media marketing for local companies is great because you can raise your
brand awareness and also build on existing relationships. It is a perfect way to
stay in touch with your local networking buddies and also recommend other
people in your area. Remember ‘givers gain’!
So, if you are serious about social media marketing know that it is worth
investing in properly for it to work. If strategic planning, content creation and
proper time is spent building relationships then social media is a winner. It will
generate you more business.
What value would you put on outsourcing your social media marketing?
Amanda is a Client Attraction Expert. She specialising in working with health,
wellness and fitness professionals who need to market their business effectively
to get more clients and make more money - but without working 70 hours a
week. What separates the Clients In Abundance service from other business
coaches is that she ONLY works with the health, wellness and fitness industry
and ONLY specialises in getting more clients and making more money, but
without getting burnt out. Because of this, Amanda's clients receive proven,
undiluted, and extremely specific step-by-step information on exactly that they
need to do to get more clients. As a result, those who coach with her get more
clients, make more money and have more free time than they would doing this
on their own.