Why a Business should use a Pro to manage their Social Media Marketing

I deal with Companies and Professionals everyday trying to explain how important is to define and implement a Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategy in a professional manner in order to expand their Business.

Lots of them (most of) are very focused on the cost to hire a professional or an agency and struggle to understand the real benefits of hiring someone to manage this on their behalf. Which is fair enough especially when it comes down budget constraints.

At the end of the day Social Media is still a recent science and there’s still a lot of ignorance in regards to what it is, how it should be managed and what the real benefits are.

Unfortunately, there is a major component that makes things even harder for SM professionals to convince their prospects: the (very) common misconception of as people are using SM everyday for their personal use, they believe that they can also manage it for business.

How many times did you hear: “...well, I am already using Facebook for my personal profile so why should I pay for someone to do it for my Business?”

And that’s pretty much the same for all of the other social media like Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.

This happens for small businesses as well as for big companies. I see big brands out there clearly not using their Social Media properly. Most of them use intern or people covering already other roles in Marketing who do that just on their “spare” time and with no specific skills.

I wanted to list down below what , according to my experience and to the most recent studies about Social Media Marketing, are the main reasons why a Business, no matter if small or big, should actually use a Professional or an Agency to manage their SMM.

1 - Define your Goals. And build a Strategy around them

What are you trying to achieve with your Social Media Strategy?

To drive traffic to your website?

To create a solid fan base of a targeted audience?

To increase your brand awareness?

To increase Sales?

To get feedback from your Fans and followers?

This also includes which Social Media better fits the purpose.

Every Social has different demographics and some can work better than others according to a specific industry as well. It takes a lot of time and experience to nail this down.

2 - Content Marketing

There’s been a lot of buzz about CM lately as marketers are realising how crucial this component is not only to determine the success of a Social Media campaign but for the whole Company image and reputation.

But what is Content Marketing? Let’s make it “simple” here. Basically what you are sharing through your Social Media (we should actually include your website, blog, etc.)

Let’s go straight to the point about what is the most common mistake that companies do about their Content Marketing. Have you ever get annoyed and disliked some brands on Facebook because they are posting just about their products? Pictures about their products. Offers about their products.

Whereas some others (a lot less) made their success talking about the lifestyle around their brand not even posting about what they actually sell.

An interesting research from Waggener Edstrom about Whether content marketing does it produce results, 81% of respondents said that it increased their website traffic and 61% their sales leads.

What works and what does not isn't something that you can learn overnight.

3 - How Often and What Time to post

In order to get results, you need to post regularly. Even here it depends on which Social Media we are talking but in most of the cases you should post at least once a day. At least.

Do you have time to be consistent?

In regards to “What Time” there’s many different researches on this topic. According to my experience there’s no general rules. It really depends on what type of content you post and moreover about the demographics of your audience. There’s an interesting article about this on Social Media Today

Also, tracking the outcome might really surprise you here. It certainly happened to me several times.

It also depends on the type of reaction you are looking for. I mean: is your post about selling your product or service? In that case the time should be set differently comparing to a post where what you are looking for is engagement.

Having a knowledge around this can make a huge difference on the outcome.

4 - How to measure your SMM strategy

This is related to your Goals and the outcome.

Set your Goals.

Set you Metrics.

Track them.

Analyse the outcome.

Review the Strategy.

Keep doing this.

If you know how to do it, then (maybe) you might not need to hire someone.

It is also very important to track the Return On Investment.

This also helps to better allocate the company budgets. Not only for Marketing. But the whole Company budget.

5 - Quality over Quantity

Numbers still matter. Not. Or not mere numbers.

Companies are still very much concerned about the number of Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers, Pinterest Fans, etc. Basically about how many people follow your Social Media.

Some prospects prefere to pay to buy thousands of Likes and Followers for cheap money (with a high risk of seeing their accounts to be suspended)rather than pay for a proper Social Media Marketing strategy. Lots of them do not know that in most of the cases what they get is just fake accounts aka not real people.

The Question is: Why?

What’s the point to have 10.000 fake Likes rather than a targeted audience of 1000 real people who have a genuine interest in your product or service and that they could eventually turn into clients?

Facebook ads plus some apps for other Social Media give you the chance to target your potential clients. To me this is probably one of the best reasons why you should actually hire a Pro.

6 - Community Management matters aka do you interact with your Fans?

One of the most important benefit of SM is that your fans/followers can interact with you leaving comments, Liking your content, mentioning in their posts, etc.

You give them the chance to raise questions about your products/services, to rank what you sell, to share their experience. But: do you actually have the time to interact with them? Do you reply to their Questions? How quick do you reply?

An intersting research conducted by The Edison Research revealed that that two-thirds of all those contacting a brand through social media for customer service expect to receive a response the exact same day.

7 - How to get the most out of your Social Media

Which apps should I use to increase my engagement and to empower my SM strategy?

How can I actually get people to subscribe to my Newsletter or to drive traffic to your website? How to run a giveaway or a competition tracking the benefits?

According to a Syncapse study, 42% of respondents said they like a brand on Facebook to get “a coupon or discount.”

8 - Can you keep up with an industry moving at the speed of light?

New Social Media are increasingly popping up and it can be hard to keep the pace.

You might think to get stick to the “old good ones” but you might miss the chance to beat your competitors using some new SM. The SM world is changing and niche and interest-based networks will rise in prominence and usage according to the latest trends in SM.

9 - The benefits might be worth the investment

As highlighted in the figure above the main benefits in using Social Media professionally are basically in bringing a major exposure to businesses while cutting costs of traditional marketing expenses as well as in generating leads and eventually Sales.

I'd like to hear what Social Media professionals think about this and from business owners and marketers if you are actually planning to use experts to manage your Social Media marketing this year?