5 Advantages Of Using A Social Media Management Company
Over the past few years, businesses big and small have been forced to ask themselves where social media fits as part of their larger marketing mix. Enterprise level businesses might be considering relegating social management to their in-house marketing departments or hiring a new full-time employee to manage their social media marketing. Both of these solutions have some serious flaws that can be solved by hiring an outside social media management company. Here are five advantages of hiring a social media management company for your business.
1. Expertise
Social media is a rapidly changing world, and information about management tools, optimization strategies, outreach programming, and platform changes comes out daily. Staying on top of best practices and upcoming changes is critical to making sure your company is taking advantage of opportunities for your brand as well as maintaining a professional appearance. Simply lumping social media into your current marketing departments other responsibilities will make all of their efforts suffer; it takes dedication and discipline to stay up-to-date on the social sphere and manage growing communities. Most large businesses hire social management out as part of their ad agencies duties or by bringing on a dedicated community manager. Bringing on a social media management company is a solution that keeps your outward-facing presences updated and professional, without your marketing department taking a hit to productivity or adding an extra employee.
2. Dedication
That brings us to our next advantage, dedication. A social media management company can provide you with multiple touches on your brand, increasing brand monitoring and response efforts as well as providing a 24/7 hand at the till. Since the main focus of the company will be to manage your social presence, brand opportunities won’t get lost in the sauce. A real-time and scalable crisis-management team on guard can quiet the cries of an upset customer before they raise an angry mob.
3. Outside-the-box perspective
An outside social media management company can bring insights to your business that you wouldn’t discover when managing things in-house. This includes drawing on experience with other clients (more on this later) as well as the fresh minds they apply to the problem. By having an unorthodox viewpoint, they can also point out opportunities that your brand might have otherwise missed. Divergent thinking means more potential solutions, increasing your businesses chance of making the best decisions. If you only looked within for advice you’d end up making a lot of the same mistakes.
4. It Saves Money
This one seems backwards, but hiring a social media management company is going to save your business money. Rolling social into the duties of a marketing branch will end up only costing your marketing and your social media management. The fact is that monitoring, responding to, and updating social presences as well as researching and surfacing opportunities to grow your community is a full-time position. Thankfully, many businesses already recognize the burden of work up-front, and look to hire a full-time staff member for that purpose. The problem with this approach is that it will inevitably cost you far more and give you much less. Beyond the on-paper costs of a salary and benefits for your new worker, you’ll have to absorb the hidden costs like training and company perks that fall elsewhere in the budgeting mix. You’ll end up with is a single, albeit capable, team member to direct your efforts. By bringing in a company that specializes in social media management, you can expect a department that is capable of scalable response and you’ll get the benefits of the entire companies efforts, not just a single individual. For the same reason that you bring in an advertising agency to help create your branding and ads, you should bring in a social media management company to select your channels, build your audience, and optimize your content.
5. Experience
There is currently a dizzying array of tools and softwares designed for simply managing day-to-day social media activities and monitoring. A social media management company will be well versed in the available tools and be able to custom-tailor a selection that fits your businesses goals. They also can provide you with the benefit of software above your punching weight that they use for multiple clients. These are hidden costs of social media management that are absorbed into the cost of hiring a management company. Additionally, your enterprise will benefit from the experience with other clients that social media management companies have had, as well as their knowledge of research tools and awareness of competitors. These are all hidden benefits only available by outsourcing your social media needs to a company who specializes in the field. This experience also means that what might be an unexpected hurdle for your corporation will be a challenge that has been dealt with by your management company before.
These reasons only scratch the surface of the benefits your business receives by hiring a management company for your social presence. Companies that specialize in several areas can bring those perspectives to your social presence in ways that a standalone manager or management company might not consider. The added effect of these advantages, plus the potential cost savings compared to other solutions, makes hiring a social media management company a no-brainer.
Have you decided to hire a social media management company or bring your social media in-house? What has your experience been? Share your stories in the comments!
