Why Outsourcing Social Media Is a Winning Strategy

On average, business owners waste about 4 billion hourseach year dealing with tasks that could easily be delegated to vendors or other employees, yet they work twice as much as their employees. Business strategists recommend delegating as many non-critical tasks as possible to work smarter, not harder.

Outsourcing social media is a winning strategy for maximizing the most of your time without sacrificing the quality of your customer engagement campaigns.

Good for budgets

There’s scarcely a business owner on the planet who isn’t watching the bottom line all the time. Tight budgets mean every penny must be pinched and every dollar squeezed, especially for startups operating on a shoestring.

Unfortunately, in-house media teams are often besieged with runaway costs and overages that eat away at their piece of the budgetary pie. Whether it’s unplanned overtime to cover for a marketing department member whose out sick or the unexpected cost of buying analytics tools to track your progress across social channels, it’s easy to end up in the red before you’ve posted your final Facebook update for the week.

When you outsource your social media, there are no surprise expenses, no last-minute software purchases, and no scrambling to cover gaps in coverage. You know what  your costs are upfront and can plan accordingly, knowing your social accounts are in good hands.

Surround yourself with experts

You know that old adage, business owners don’t need to know everything if they surround themselves with people who are experts in their own field? Bringing in an outside social media team fits this concept perfectly.

Unless you’re running a social media firm, your expertise probably lie in other areas. Just as you’d hire an electrician to wire the fire alarms in your office, so should you hire professionals to handle this unique aspect of your marketing strategy.

Businesses that hand off important social media tasks to a new intern or recent hire are brands that don’t fare as well in social marketing. You don’t need to know everything about the nuts and bolts of social media management as long as you hire a team that does.

Hang in there

Social marketing takes momentum and time to build. It’s easy to get discouraged when you don’t see immediate results, especially when you feel like your time could be better spent working on other ways to grow your business.

Too many small businesses that try social media marketing either don't do it right or don't do it long enough, or both, and then give up, thinking it doesn't work. You can absolutely use social media to drive and track new leads and sales, increased frequency of purchase from current customers, both very hard business metrics, but don't expect this to happen overnight, or over three weeks. Expect to see (and by all means track!) results within six to nine months.

It takes a long time to see results because business owners are pulled in many directions and only have a limited time to devote to making it work. Outsourcing teams have the expertise and ability to groom your social media accounts for solid growth in less time.

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Social Media and Outsourcing: How Significant Are They?

Social media is beyond doubt one of the most powerful tools that most businesses use today to market and create their image or brand online. Professionals, entrepreneurs, start-ups and even normal individuals benefit from it in so many ways, such as connecting to people in the same niche to share interests and acquiring potential customers to increase revenues. Yes, that’s the thing everyone in this generation knows and there’s no need to discuss more of it.

However, it is still possible that not all of the people, up to this date, know how and when social media started and as to what purpose it was really created for.  According to an article, “The History of Social Networking” by Gordon Gole, in DigitalTrends.com, the vision of connected computers becoming a round-table for common thoughts and interests nearly began in the 1970s but it was just totally loved and accepted by many on the start of the 20^th century. If you have an account on Classmates.com and SixDeegrees.com, then you were part of Social Networking’s explosion in the World Wide Web. As many people welcomed it, Friendster was a part of the said breakthrough as well. Then Facebook came and so on and so forth.

People didn’t likely see its significance in the business world then, because it was meant for personal intentions only. However, as technology and businesses merged, professionals came with the idea of using its power to connect to the world, considering the number of potential customers they can acquire through it and how gigantic their exposure would be. Strategies developed, improved, implemented and effectively helped many.  The current status of Zappos.com is a clear example of how social media has helped a company. And, how did they do it? They outsourced.

Outsourcing has been an approach that was just accepted by some companies recently – yes, some. Because, not all companies consider this approach bearing in mind the risks involved of having somebody to handle and take control of their name online, especially when connecting with their existing and potential customers. Although there already are many known benefits of social media outsourcing, some doesn’t still want to jeopardize their company names.

Many people, especially those who are involved in start-ups and small businesses, must have probably taken the term “social media outsourcing” too literally. For instance, when a person hears it, he or she is likely to think that somebody (an outsourcing partner) will have to post updates, add friends, follow pages, comment on photos, and upload videos in behalf of his or her own company. Trust, conformity and credibility will eventually go along with their doubts as well.

On the other hand, they must know that there are BPO companies that don’t just offer the same services they have in mind. There are a lot more social media solutions that they can outsource and can ever imagine! They don’t actually have to worry because those solutions don’t involve “somebody to take over their posting and communicating activities” all throughout social media using their company profiles.

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