There are good reasons to hire a social media marketer, but every reason may not match your particular situation. For example, it makes sense if you’re a solopreneur or a small business owner with limited staff, or you just launched your startup. Hiring a social media marketer frees up your time so you can focus on growing your business. But even if you have a staff, there could be good reasons to outsource your social media marketing.
Do You Need to be Marketing on Social Media?
In today’s digital ecosystem, social media is the only way to increase your brand’s reach. Consumers turn to social media channels to search for products and services. However, they’re not always looking for a specific brand. If you’re not on social media, you’ll lose the opportunity to connect with these organic visitors.
Surveys reveal that 83% of Instagram users discovered new brands when searching on the platform.
Strategic use of social media helps you build customer engagement with your brand, converting them into loyal consumers and brand ambassadors.
An effective social media strategy humanizes your brand and creates authenticity. You can use your digital content to reveal to your audience how your service or product helps them. You can show your target audience how your current customers benefit from your service or product by posting consumer-generated content.
Social media enables you to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. With impactful, genuine digital content, you can become the go-to source for helpful information on the topics that relate to your industry.
There’s a worldwide audience on social media.
A 2021 Pew Research Center study found that 70% of social media users visit their channels at least once per day. In addition, as many as 49% reveal that they go on social media several times per day. So, if you’re on social media, you’ll capture the attention of an organic audience searching for the latest news, products, and solutions to their problems.
Digital content on social media channels drives traffic to your website and generates leads.
According to research, “customers who engage with companies over social media are more loyal and spend up to 40% more with those companies than with others.”
Of course, this kind of engagement and conversion rate doesn’t happen overnight. One of the critical ingredients in a successful social media marketing strategy is consistency. Therefore, if you skip days on social media because you’re busy running your small business, you’ll lose customer engagement. So what should you do? You can either hire someone to handle your digital marketing or outsource to an experienced social media marketer.
What are the Advantages of Hiring a Social Media Marketer?
When you first launch your business, you may get away with limiting your social media marketing to one channel. But most likely, you want to scale your business, which means you’ll need to expand your outreach efforts.
Research shows that your target customers are omnichannel consumers.
Spend all your time marketing on multiple social media channels, and you’ll have less time to deal with customers, services, products, and market opportunities.
Furthermore, you may not have the skills to conduct a full-scale social media campaign. You may love posting photos of your products, team members, and customers on Instagram and Facebook. But this will not get you to where you want to be when growing your brand image and market footprint.
You’ll Have Time to Focus on the Job of Running a Business
You can’t run an effective social media marketing campaign on the side. It requires significant and consistent focus.
A successful social media campaign includes multiple channels, shifting from one to the next as the demographics of your target audience become more apparent. For example, a campaign might reinforce your brand image across various channels, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and perhaps even TikTok. Unfortunately, managing such a campaign yourself will leave you with no time to implement strategies to grow your business.
A Social Media Market Has a Better Sense of How Your Target Audience Perceives You
You might spend precious hours putting out a lot of informative and engaging social media posts that no one sees. However, social media marketers understand how your target audience perceives your brand.
Expertise and Experience
A social media marketer knows the digital marketing industry. They have expertise in communications and the principles of marketing, advertising, and branding.
Stay on Top of Evolving Social Media Platform Changes
Facebook, for example, is constantly updating its algorithms, many of which have drastically reduced the organic reach of brands. This means that savvy social media marketers need to be ready to revise and update their strategies to overcome new hurdles and challenges from algorithm changes and other updates.
Social media marketers stay abreast of social media platform trends and the changes that impact your ability to reach your audience. They’ll make sure your content remains relevant and competitive in an increasingly crowded digital marketplace.
Social Media Marketers are Objective
Social media managers focus on the bigger picture. Because you’re close to your business, you may be unable to see vulnerabilities in your marketing plan. For example, you might enjoy interacting with your consumers on social media. However, if you’re working it in first thing in the morning or during your lunch break, you might miss the signs of declining consumer confidence in your brand or weaknesses in customer satisfaction.
An outside, objective eye can better assess your digital marketing performance
- what types of call to action to use
- will more visual or video content improve engagement
- is your response time too slow
Experienced social media managers have their finger on the pulse, enabling them to pivot your digital marketing strategy to include emerging channels quickly. In addition, they’ll be able to set the pace for any digital channel expansion or shift.
Help You Understand Your Analytics
A social media manager comprehends and explains to you essential data regarding your brand strategy. A critical part of their job is to track and assess metrics, including website conversions, engagements, and growth in followers. In addition, they use social listening tools to track what users are saying about your brand on the internet. These are all critical factors that should influence your digital marketing strategy.
Working With a Social Media Marketer
A social media manager should understand your short-term and long-term business goals. They should be able to connect with your consumer audience on social media in ways that grow your business according to your strategic plan.
Social media professionals can adapt your brand voice and tone across multiple social media platforms. Unfortunately, unfamiliar or mixed messaging can result in customer confusion and loss of loyalty. Your social media manager should be able to do this for all of your services and products.
Collaboration is Key
Social media marketers need to have a collaborative spirit and the ability to work with your team. They may be outside the office. Nevertheless, even though they work independently, pursuing the goals you have agreed upon, they are not decision-makers for your company. It’s good to make use of communication tools such as Trello or Slack. Even digital creation platforms such as Canva allow for teams to work together on social media graphic designs.
In-House vs. Contractor
You can add a social media specialist to your in-house team. The financial investment will be more significant, but in-house staff will have a close relationship with your business. Someone in the office will be more aligned with your long-term goals and objectives. Additionally, a member of your team is more likely to be already familiar with your industry.
Outsourcing is more cost-effective. Additionally, it provides you the flexibility to retain services at the beginning of your launch or if you want to introduce a new product, service, or enter a new market. In addition, because it’s a contractual relationship, you can limit the time that you work together.
A freelancer is outside the company, and therefore more able to see weaknesses in your marketing strategy. On the other hand, a freelancer may not be as familiar with your industry as someone you hire to join your team. As a result, they may need to do extensive research to learn all the facets of your niche that enable them to execute effective and engaging social media campaigns.
Bottom Line
Social media marketing is no longer optional for brands, no matter the size of your company. Without a social media presence, you won’t reach the organic audience you need to grow your company and revenues.
- An effective social media campaign drives visitors to your website, enabling you to meet your conversion targets.
- Engaging and informative social media content builds trust in your brand. In addition, it helps to establish you as an authority in your industry.
- An in-house social media manager takes more from your monthly cash flow, but they’re likely to be more aligned with your long-term goals and objectives.
- Contracting with a social media marketer is more cost-efficient and flexible.
- If you’re a startup or running your business with limited staff, a social media marketer is the way to go.
- Contracting with a freelancer can be beneficial when you’re ready to rebrand, enter a new market, or introduce new services and products.
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