3 Things to Consider When Outsourcing Social Media
by Sophie BujoldThe latest in a series on effective social media marketing, by travel industry consultant Sophie Bujold.
Are you considering hiring someone to handle your social media activities? If you haven’t thought it through, it could be a true disaster.
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Before you reach into your pocket to pay someone else to be social on your behalf, here are three important points to consider.
1. Will your brand’s voice remain authentic?
You are the master of your brand’s voice. You know its values, practices and audience best. Since social media is one of the top tools for amplifying that voice, consider this carefully when deciding if outsourcing is right for you.
What if your new outsourced voice is not like yours? Or what if it starts sounding exactly like the voice of other travel sellers who use the same company? A poorly chosen community manager sends the wrong message to your fans or followers: we don’t care enough about you to show up ourselves. Not exactly the way to social media stardom.
Unfortunately, this is often the result you get from outsourcing to companies that claim to specialize in posting for you.
Success tip
To avoid these issues, consider recruiting someone to your agency or opt for a community manager who has a limited number of clients.
Then, spend as much time as you can teaching them about your business, communicating your needs and integrating them into your corporate culture – before they start posting on your behalf. If they have no interest in learning these things, you know you need to look elsewhere.
2. How will customer service be handled?
Do you expect your community manager to also handle customer service inquiries? If so, they need to be familiar with travel planning or have access to resources that can help them respond promptly.
It’s amazing how often I come across pages where the community manager gets a travel inquiry and replies, “I’ll look into that for you!” or “I have no idea. Good question,” then never returns. In fact, more than 95% of wall posts on brand pages go unanswered, according to social media monitoring company Socialbakers.
Don’t let this be your brand experience. Make sure the person handling your presence knows how to respond to inquiries and does so in a timely manner. This is obviously easier if they are an integral part of your team.
3. Do I have a plan in place that provides good direction?
No matter how good a community manager is, they can’t do their best work if you don’t provide them with clear direction.
This means spending time sketching the broad strokes of a plan that includes clear goals, target audience and other details. (See my column, “Wasting Time on Social Media? You Need a Plan,” April 23, 2012.) This will help your new assistant home in on the right tools and tactics.
Once your plan is in place, you need to stay on it and stay involved.
Outsourcing doesn’t always save time
A recent study by Hubspot revealed that 72% of small businesses handle social media in-house. While the study doesn’t explore why this is so, I’ll venture a guess that one reason is the work involved in outsourcing social media.
Successful outsourcing of social media marketing is simply not as easy as handing things off and forgetting about it. So make sure you consider your options before opening up your wallet. And be prepared to offer as much support as possible to the person who ends up helping you.
Sophie Bujold is a social strategist who helps travel professionals achieve online success. She is the creator of Take Flight with Facebook, a social media FAM trip program, and works individually with travel agencies across North America. For more insights from Sophie, visit her website and sign up for free weekly email tips.
