As more professional service firms use social media as a platform for their marketing activities, the question of whether to outsource those activities will come up with greater frequency. Today I want to talk a little about how to go about making those outsourcing decisions.
For the sake of this post, let’s divide social media marketing activities into 2 broad categories, creating valuable content and distributing that content so it can be found by those who need it when they need it, with the hopes of leading them back to us so they can hire us to help solve their problems.
The activities in the distributing category can also be broken up into 2 broad categories – getting ready and ongoing. Getting ready activities are things like setting up blog software, creating profiles (Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Biznik, etc.), and creating accounts on social bookmarking sites. It can also include creating listening stations and dashboards.
Activities in the ongoing distribution category are those activities that need to be done whenever a new piece of content is created. Things like:
- tagging and categorizing
- submitting to community sites
- “pinging” your social communities
- repurposing content
In my opinion, the activities best suited for outsourcing are those in the distribution category. These activities do not require the specific expertise of the firm and can be handled more efficiently by a company that has a “factory” set up to handle them.
Creating content that is valuable to your current and future customers is not as suitable for outsourcing. Neither is finding content that others have created and explaining how it impacts your customers business. Content creation, should favor effectiveness over efficiency.
Of course, some types of content (i.e. eBooks or research studies) that are helpful for your customers may be a prime candidates for outsourcing. However, I believe that blog content, online articles, etc. should be created by the firm.
Many firms struggle through the "getting ready” activities on their own before they ever get to a decision point about whether or not to outsource. If this is you, then you don’t have to worry about this step, although, you may want to outsource these as other professionals in your firm begin to participate in social media.
I often like to compare social media conversations with in person conversations. If you are going to have a conversation with a prospect, it would make sense to outsource things like appointment setting, calling to confirm, making reservations, and even transportation, but you wouldn’t send someone else from outside your company to have the actual conversation with them, would you?
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