Episode Summary

Let’s talk about something that can be a little controversial: Is it a good idea for business owners to outsource their social media? 

In today’s podcast episode, Melissa Swink discusses whether or not to outsource social media. She explores the different opinions on this topic and provides insights for business owners considering this big step. Melissa underscores the importance of authenticity and the need for a collaborative relationship with your chosen service provider. She also discusses setting realistic goals and expectations for outsourcing social media, such as what you can expect for ROI. Tune in to hear both sides of this discussion!

Key Highlights:

• There are differing opinions on whether or not to outsource social media, so it's important to consider what works best for your business.
• Authenticity is key in social media content, whether you do it yourself or outsource it.
• When outsourcing social media, look for a service provider that offers a collaborative relationship and open communication.
• Set realistic goals and expectations around ROI, and consider starting small and gradually expanding.

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi everyone, welcome to the Make Space for More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and in today's episode, we're gonna talk about a somewhat controversial topic. Not too controversial, I don't wanna scare anybody, but there is no shortage of opinions on this, and so I wanted to address it because I recently saw an argument in a Facebook group for entrepreneurs

I actually had a conversation a couple of days ago with a potential client who's kind of struggling with this, and that is, should you outsource your social media? And so going back to that Facebook group, the person had posted, I'm thinking about hiring out my social media. What do you think? Is this something that I should do or not do? And there were really two main types of approaches with the answer to that question. Number one was,

absolutely do not do it, you'll lose authenticity, it's not really you, then what's the point and all that sort of thing. And then there was another camp which was do it, it's so much more efficient, I'm so much happier to have that off my plate, I have a great team that's getting me a lot of results. It was just very, very interesting and the two were just very convicted in their opinions on this topic.

And then I've also had conversations recently and certainly in the past with clients who are like, you know, we're trying to decide, does it make sense for us to invest in hiring someone to do social media for us? How does that work? What can we expect in terms of results? And so with all of this conversation going on, both in person and online, I thought that we would talk a little bit more about that today. So as I was preparing, I was looking at some statistics online because of course,

At the end of the day, a lot of the work that I do with my clients is viewed through the lens of how are we spending our time and is that in alignment with the goals that we have set for ourselves? And that's a lot about what I talk about, the overarching theme on this podcast as well. And so I did some research and according to a survey by Vertical Response, CEOs, business owners and sole proprietors, so we're not talking about,

corporations, anything like that. We're talking about people like you and me who are running our businesses, leading our teams, serving our clients to the very best of our ability, wearing a lot of hats and things. 63 % of us spend up to five hours a week on social media. 23 % spend up to 10 hours. And about 14 % spend 11 hours or more. And so when we look at...

You know, is that the best use of our time as the CEOs of our companies? Or does it make sense to take a look at is there somebody else who could get involved with something like this? Because again, at the end of the day, how we spend our time directly impacts our results. So if you're debating like, I'm not sure, should I outsource my social media? Should I keep it in house? Should I keep doing it myself? There's really a couple of factors to consider and then we can talk a little bit more about

If you should choose to outsource your social media, what are some of the things that you should be aware of, consider, or think about ahead of time? So the number one thing that I would say to consider when debating whether you want to look at outsourcing this is, social media marketing one of your strengths? Does it come naturally and easily to you? Do you enjoy it? Are you actually getting traction with the way that you're doing social media right now?

And I would say if the answer to that question is yes, then maybe this is something that you want to keep on your plate for the time being or keep it in -house if you've got somebody on your team who's really crushing it with social media. And instead, take a look at what are some other activities in the business that you may want to outsource instead. Maybe you love the content creation, you love building community. That's something that's very

personal and near and dear to your heart, but you don't love accounting and your books your books are not up to date you last forced yourself to sit in front of the computer and you Enter in your receipts and categorize your transactions, you know But it's been six months and it's something that you hate doing Maybe that's something that you want to prioritize instead of outsourcing social media but I would say if the answer to that question is no or it's like

You know, I do get some good traction with my social media when I spend the time on it, but it takes me a lot of time to create the content, find what I want to post. It takes a long time for me to write it and find images for it. You know, maybe it's something that you want to take a look at getting some help with. Or maybe it's, you know what, I don't enjoy social media. I don't use it a lot personally. I know it's important for my business.

but I really don't want to do all of this myself, then I think this could be a really good candidate for outsourcing. So if you're looking at outsourcing your social media, here are a couple of things that I think are really important to consider. So number one, authenticity is king. So going back to that Facebook argument that I was reading, I think the problem with outsourcing social media,

is that if you don't choose the right service provider or if you are looking to make the minimal investment possible in your social media, you can definitely lose the authenticity factor. So for example, we often will evaluate a client's social media pages when they are considering outsourcing their social media to us. We'll take a look at what is their current

page look like, what kind of engagement do they have, what type of content are they posting right now, and what are our recommendations for improving and building upon where they're already at. And the number one thing that makes us cringe as an agency that does handle social media for clients is the painfully generic content. It may even be very bland AI -generated content. Stock photos. We even saw

recently, even some clip art, like some old school clip art as social media images. It was very clear that the content that was being posted on the social media page was not being created by somebody at this business. That's definitely what we don't want. Number one, that's not something that's a good use of your dollars if

No one is responding or reacting to those posts. It's not adding any value. I would even be as harsh to say as it's probably more harmful for your brand than anything else, because when somebody meets you at a networking event or you connect with potential clients, maybe on your LinkedIn, and then they go and do a little bit of digging and look at your social media feed just to learn a little bit more about you and your company, it can be a major turnoff. And so I think authenticity is huge.

So whether you're doing your own social media, which obviously the authenticity factor would be higher, or if you're outsourcing to somebody else, I think there's a couple of things that are really, really important. We wanna make sure that we are using as often as possible real brand photos and maybe even videos if that's something that you're currently doing or looking to add to your social media content strategy, but showing photos of

you and your team and if you have a physical location, your office, maybe some behind the scenes of getting ready for this presentation today. All of those things are really, really important in terms of building authenticity and ultimately building that trust and credibility. Certainly brand voice is very, very important. Making sure that we are speaking to

the people that you want to be speaking to and so that it sounds like you. think authenticity is huge in that regard in terms of what exactly the content is, the written content is saying. And we certainly want to be providing value. We don't want to be generating more noise out there. And we want to be creating quality content. I am a believer in quality over quantity over and over and over with a variety of things in both personal,

and on the business side of things, but authenticity is huge. Cannot emphasize that enough. I would say, if you're in one of those industries, and I'm not picking on any one particular industry, but I know this is very common in real estate. It's common in financial services, insurance, things like that, where you can pay companies to take over your social media and handle that for you for a fairly minimal fee per month. The problem is, is that they're just posting generic content.

that could be on everyone else's pages. Maybe they're like, give us a call for a quote today, where they do give you that direct call to action, or maybe they're sharing some industry tips or maybe relevant articles related to your industry, but you're missing from it. You're missing from that equation. I would say consider whether that's worth your investment or not.

is what I would say with something like that. Okay, another thing to consider if you are looking at outsourcing your social media is I would look for a service provider that offers that collaborative relationship. Talking to other business owners who are currently outsourcing their social media, one of the complaints that I commonly hear is that it's not a very collaborative approach. Like we hired this company, we did an onboarding call,

and they've been running our social media ever since. They're not really incorporating our ideas or maybe we're having a special promotion or a sale and those things are not getting posted. So I would look at a service provider who's willing to have a collaborative relationship with open -ended communication. So just to give you kind of an example of how we work with our clients, which I think a lot of good social media service providers follow.

at least somewhat of the same thing, is we often start with our clients with a kickoff call with our content strategy team. So that's where we can take care of, of course, the logistics of getting logins and getting some of those things taken care of. But we also dive a lot deeper into what is the story of your company? Who are the clients that you serve?

What are your competitors doing online? What do you like about that? What do you not like about that? We talk about different types of content that we wanna be creating. We wanna make sure there's a variety of educational and engaging and posting resources, not just all promote, promote, promote, that sort of thing. So we take care of all of that in that content strategy. But then from there on out, as we're creating content with our clients,

we're sending that to them to review ahead of time so they can take a look and make sure that what we are saying and what we are posting on their behalf is authentic to them. It is in alignment with their brand and their goals and all of that. And they're also able to say like, hey, I'm gonna be having this new course launching next month. We wanna make sure that we do some posts for that or.

we're going to be having a sale for back to school. It's late August when I'm recording this, but these communications to make sure that the content is relevant and matches up with what you're trying to achieve in your business is really, important. So that is between the formal conversations that we have back and forth. But then we also make sure that we are having either a monthly

or a quarterly analytics review where we can take a look and see what content is performing the best and how can we do more of that and build upon that. And then take a look at what's coming up in the business so that we're able to make sure that your content is relevant and on point. So we have that collaboration. And certainly we also provide monitoring and engagement services as well. So we can make sure that

New comments are being responded to. That's the other thing is, we see companies that are just pushing content, but if somebody even does leave a comment, that comment is being completely ignored. So it's only a one -sided conversation. We want to make sure that we're also interacting with those who are interacting with our posts so that we keep that engagement up and we show the human side of social media. We're also checking in messages and making sure that if there's anything

that requires a more detailed or thoughtful response from our clients or if there's a question that needs to be answered, that we are reaching out to clients and making sure that we are responding to that question accurately on their behalf. I think it's just really important that you find that collaborative relationship and also find yourself in alignment with a company that wants to have that two -way conversation with your audience and your customers as well. And then the third thing that I would think about

when we're looking at outsourcing your social media is being realistic about your goals and expectations for that working relationship. So one of the golden questions that I get is what kind of return on investment can I expect from something like this? So I hate to say it like this, but with organic content, the goal is to build community. Its goal is to build trust and credibility and increase brand awareness. You're not going to get

I shouldn't say that you're not going to get, but it is difficult to determine the return on investment with organic social media content. But we also know that organic social media content is extremely important for ultimately building that trust and credibility in order to then create business from that content, if that makes sense. So let me give you an example. If I meet somebody at a networking event and we connect on LinkedIn,

They're watching my LinkedIn posts or they see my posts in their feed or maybe they go to my LinkedIn page. Maybe they look me up on Facebook or Instagram or something like that. And they're seeing that content and they're seeing a little bit more about me and our company and what we're about. That's all really, really important before they ultimately decide I'm interested in having a conversation to see how they can support me. And you certainly have your own variation and version of that in your business.

I think it's really important to have that organic content out there, which isn't necessarily like buy from me, buy from me, buy from me, if that makes sense. But taking that a step further, certainly paid content like paid ads and boosting posts and things like that, that you can look more closely at a return on investment. There's often much more

detailed reports and information that you can gauge, is this working or is it not? Again, that also goes hand in hand with the organic content. If you're just posting paid ads and then you have little or no organic content or it's extremely generic, it's not going to build that trust and credibility. So the two definitely go hand in hand. Okay, lastly, something to consider before outsourcing your social media is your budget.

I would say it's okay to start small and again, look at quality over quantity and then build from there. Maybe you want to start with one platform on social media and doing a post or two a week. And then maybe you want to take a look at, we add social media platforms? Maybe we're starting off with just a LinkedIn post a week. Okay, now we're going to be incorporating in Facebook. We're going to be incorporating Instagram. You can walk before you run.

but I want you to pay close attention to your budget and do what makes sense for you and your company. I am a big proponent of profit first. I've talked about that in my business before, and I say this because I know firsthand that our businesses can turn into cash eating monsters very, very quickly. And so I think it is important to see what is the best that I can do with my budget and then continue to build from there as the business continues to grow.

So I would certainly not encourage you to go out and spend thousands and thousands of dollars on organic social media and hope for the best. Maybe there's a stepping stone in order to get to that point again, as you start seeing more traction and seeing more clientele coming through the doors, if that makes sense. Okay, all of that being said, if you know a small business owner who's struggling to maintain their own social media presence,

or they're trying to determine if they should outsource, would you share this episode with them? I'm hoping that this gives them perspective on, there a way to do this well or is it something we should keep in house? I know there's a lot of factors and then there's always the question of how does that even work? How does somebody actually incorporate my brand voice and my strategy in the post? How do they make it sound like me? There's definitely ways to do that.

Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. I hope that this information was valuable to you. I'm looking forward to having you again on my next episode of the Make Space for More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business beyond you. I'll be back with more tips and tools and strategies soon. Have a wonderful day. Bye everyone.