Entrepreneurs wear so many hats: niche expert, bookkeeper, sales person, office cleaner, receptionist, and so on. If one of the hats you’ve taken on is Social Media Marketing Expert for your company, you may want to step back and consider which of the tasks that you perform on a regular basis could be outsources. If you are toiling away at your bookkeeping and not selling enough widgets or returning phone calls, you need to decide if you’re spending your time wisely. Figure it like this: Take your hourly rate then decide how long it takes you to perform a task that is not in your wheelhouse and then you can determine if you can outsource it and potentially reap a savings.
If social media marketing is one of those tasks that you’re just not certain you’re excelling at, here are a few metrics to check on your way to deciding whether you will outsource this task:
- When is the last time you updated your website? When is the last time you wrote a blog post? If the answer to either of those is, “I can’t remember,” or “Blog, what blog?” You need to consider having someone who is well versed in social media marketing pick up those tasks for you. Your website is your calling card to the world and if you still have the same site, with the same wording and colors you had when you started business a decade (or even a year!) ago, it’s time to turn the reins over to someone else. Websites are more than a pretty portal into your business expertise, it is a vital component in your marketing.
- Do you have time to keep up with the latest rules of search engine optimization and what new changes Facebook has implement or even the algorithm changes that Google announced on April 21? If the answer is a resounding, “no,” you need to work with a professional who spends his or her time deeply involved in this on a daily basis.
- Are you advertising online but not seeing any results? While you have heard that search engine advertising is cost effective, it isn’t if you’re not seeing results. It is a program that not only needs to be implemented correctly, but maintained regularly.
- Do you think that your Facebook friends are your potential client base? They may, or they may not, be. If you aren’t sure though you could be spinning your wheels if you’re concentrating your marketing efforts there. You also need to be aware that the purpose of Facebook or any social platform is to be… social. You will alienate friends and potential clients if all of your status updates are of the “buy me, buy me” sort. Understand your demographics, understand where they congregate and where they go to research before they make their buying decisions — then market there.
- What is the return on investment of your marketing efforts? If you don’t know or if you aren’t certain where to go to measure them, you should work with a professional who can share with you where your clients are coming from (mobile, search, social media, etc.) how long they are on your page, which pages on your website they are spending time on and for how long. If you aren’t certain how many page views you have on your site or don’t know if the marketing efforts you’re putting forth are raising those page views, you need to step back and turn it over to someone who can help you make sense of the analytics.
Investing in a social media partner to take on that “hat-wearing” role could benefit you in terms of new clients, free time for you to concentrate on your core competencies and higher search engine rankings. Isn’t it time you outsourced your social media marketing?