“If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you’re putting yourself out of business.” – Lee Kuan Yew, Former Prime Minister of Singapore
Are you thinking seriously about implementing social media in your marketing strategy?
Social media has emerged as one of the most potent marketing channels for businesses of all sizes in the past decade. It offers organizations a way to reach millions of potential customers easily.
But social media management is no easy task. For some, outsourcing can be the best option, and it will be inevitable in the future. However, businesses are still reluctant to outsource as they believe it involves a lot of risks.
When you allow someone to use your social handles, they become your brand voice and the face of your company. Whatever they say or do will be considered as bona fide communication from your company. A minor lapse or a casual attitude may damage your brand. That’s the reason people don’t allow someone else to handle their social media accounts.
If you have adequate time and a skilled workforce, it is best to manage the social media of your brand yourself. It will save money and a lot of hassle. However, that is not always possible.
Why Do You Need to Outsource Social Media Marketing?
Below are some reasons where outsourcing can be the best option:
1. Professional Know-How
A social media specialist is trained to reach the desired audience using the best-targeted ad strategies. They will also provide expert help and suggestions to create your social strategy. Moreover, they can utilize social media to improve your business reach.
Furthermore, if you hire the services of a white label social media agency, you get access to experienced professionals who are well-versed with marketing and public relations. You also get the benefit of working with a team of professionals who can collaborate to produce the best results.
2. Platform-Specific Knowledge
Different platforms have different focuses and user bases. For example, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn all have different audiences, and a social media expert knows which platform/s will be the most effective to use for your business. Using the wrong platform means wasting your precious time and money only to see no concrete results.
Consistent brand messaging on the right platforms will always yield positive results.
3. Get Access to the Best Tools
Tools provide you with better insights into your clients' target audience to produce better results. You also need the best social media tools for content creation, designing, publishing, and measuring content performance. It's also applicable to measuring the performance of your social media posts and analyzing what works best for you.
However, buying subscriptions to these tools can be very expensive, especially for startups. It doesn't make sense to invest in these costly tools if you're not planning to launch a separate social media department as an agency or business.
When you outsource from a reputed white label Facebook Ads service to run your social media campaigns, you get the advantage of the best-paid tools. Your white-label online marketing teams must have access to significant premium tools needed to beat the competition. These tools will provide you the necessary insights into your social media campaigns so that you can tweak them accordingly.
If you are an agency and want to avail of white label social media services from DashClicks, you get access to a CRM Dashboard. It will help you manage tasks easily and also come in handy for your clients.
It will create a truly transformational experience for your clients, where you can access everything related to your client's campaign through one simple login.
It will automatically onboard and add clients to your white-labeled dashboard in seconds. It will also allow clients to access their intuitive reporting dashboards from a straightforward login, all under your brand. You can effortlessly build trust through our thoughtfully crafted dashboards that create trust when working with clients.
Apart from that, there are many other reasons why you need professional social media services.
- They help you craft appealing content that comes with the right hashtags and promotional techniques.
- They will help you figure out your content and advertising strategy better since they are more familiar with the social media landscape than you and have a better understanding of various social platforms.
- They give you an external perspective on marketing and strategy and thus allow you to view it with fresh eyes.
- You must have heard the slogan “The Citi Never Sleeps,” which is Citibank’s tagline. Likewise, social media also doesn’t sleep. It’s active 24*7. Your white-label outsourcing partner provides you round-the-clock coverage since they keep an eye on all the social platforms and what’s happening and trending out there. Therefore, you can invest your time and focus on your core business.
How to Outsource Social Media Management?
So, Are you ready to outsource your social media marketing operations?
We have just discovered the multiple benefits of outsourcing social media. It's the most feasible option for various businesses and agencies unless you plan to build your own social media department and invest heavily in hiring professionals and buying expensive tools. Social media outsourcing for small businesses is a growing trend simply because it's an economical and stress-free way to pick the low-hanging fruits of social media.
Here are a few things you should keep in mind while outsourcing social media services:
1. Outsource for Content Strategy an Account Setup Only
If you can manage your social media properties yourself, you can outsource these services for the short term, especially when you are in the account setup stage. Your outsourcing partner would take out the hassle by setting up your social media accounts and advising you on content strategy.
It is a viable option for many businesses with digital marketing teams to create content, promote, and publish. All they need is a roadmap, a blueprint for success, and strategy tips. They will also develop a social media calendar for you to boost engagement and create brand awareness.
Tip: Since it takes lots of expertise and time to handle social media properties, you can only consider the above option if you have a strict branding code and don't want someone else to represent you on social media.
2. Choose a Reputed Social Media Consultant or White Label Partner
There are various options for hiring social media services for your business. You can choose to work with freelancers or hire an agency. These days, most agencies that need social media services hire white label services to manage their social media marketing. These guys manage the services round the clock on behalf of those businesses with the help of tools and dedicated people for publishing content, running ads, and providing customer services.
Before you choose someone to act as your face on social media, make sure they are reliable and trustworthy.
How to Check the Trustworthiness of Third-Party Service Providers?
Researching online about the service provider is the best way to make sure that they are trustworthy. Sites like LinkedIn can provide some basic information about their services. Google reviews are also a good indicator of someone's reputation. The website's testimonial section is also an excellent place to know what their customers say about their services.
However, do not rely on testimonials alone as often businesses are selective about testimonials and post only positive ones. Checking with your industry peers and colleagues for referrals is also a good idea to find a trustworthy service.
3. Work Closely When You Hire Them Full-Time
Initially, you will have to work closely and spend more time with your outsourcing partner to educate them and ensure that they're doing it right. First, let them understand your branding. It will also help them to represent your business the way you want. Your consultant must be fully aware of the do's and don'ts while managing your social media properties.
4. Keep Up With Your Consultant's Work
Regardless of your consultant's experience, reputation, and efficiency, it might take up to a few months to understand your business culture, speed, audience, and social media requirements. Check the posts created by them; maybe they aren't in sync with your brand statement. There may be some factual errors in the content they've posted. For example, you might not be providing a particular service that they mentioned in their posts. Or, they might not follow your brand color palette in the graphics.
Therefore, it becomes crucial that you keep yourself updated on your consultant's work. You can't afford to rely on them blindly, especially when your core business needs and branding are at stake.
They can be experts in their domain, i.e., social media, but they may not have the insights into your business as your in-house employees have. Monitoring will immensely help you identify how they are contributing to your business. Regular feedback on their work will also help them to understand your business needs and improve their services.
The Do's and Don'ts of Social Media Management
The social media landscape is dynamic, exciting, and full of adventure and fun. So, even the experts need to be cautious and mind the dos and don'ts of social media while achieving their marketing objectives. It can be tricky both ways, i.e., managing your social media in-house or outsourcing it to a third party.
Social media is a marketing and sales goldmine, but you can tap its infinite potential only if you're doing it correctly.
The do's and don'ts mentioned below will help you understand how to proceed while managing your social media marketing in-house. It will also help you be mindful of what you should keep track of while outsourcing your social media services. It will help you to achieve the best results.
Common Mistakes in Social Media Management (The Don'ts)
Here are a few common mistakes businesses make while handling their social media properties.
1. Posting Without a Plan
"Post when you get time."
This attitude can be dangerous when it comes to social media. There is a clear line of distinction between personal and business properties on social media. Consistency is a key element of social media marketing.
People don't post when it's not a priority for them. However, it does not apply to the marketing of your business, as it should always be your top priority. Regular social media posting is good for engagement, customer loyalty, and brand recall. Brand Recall is the ratio of people who can recollect your brand when prompted.
2. Assigning It to a Novice
“The novice’s zeal doesn’t last long.” A French Proverb
Most businesses have a casual attitude towards social media marketing. Managers assign it to anybody who knows a bit about Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They ask their employees to quickly run through a few online tutorials and then run the campaigns themselves. While training your employees is a good idea, you shouldn't sacrifice something vital to your business.
If someone in your team is a bit inexperienced, ask them to work under expert supervision for some time before you allow them to handle your social media accounts. Just because somebody has an account on Instagram doesn't mean that they can run Instagram campaigns. The worst we can expect from management is to make someone in charge of the entire social media marketing if they don't know the ins and outs.
3. Posting About Me, Me and Me
"Social media creates communities, not markets." Don Schultz, marketing pioneer
Whoever thinks that social media is a place to sell has a big misconception about its very nature. It's primarily meant for networking and sharing information, thoughts, feelings, updates, and slices of your life. It's mostly about entertainment and information.
There are many brands that only talk about their own products and occasional discounts on them. You'll hardly see any engagement on their pages except if they are super famous brands.
Instead, you can use social media to generate interest in your brand and curiosity around your products.
For example, Nike never posts about their shoes. Instead, they post about sports activities, sports events, health and fitness, and sports celebrities.
The key is to understand that social media is all about engagement, and you should target different groups based on their interests and hobbies.
What You Should Do in Social Media Marketing (The DO’s)
Even though you can’t directly sell on social media, you can achieve many of your marketing objectives through social media platforms. All you need is to have a solid plan for it.
Here are a few things you should do on social platforms while marketing for your brand.
1. Develop a Unique Brand Impression
“Identity is a cause; a brand is an effect, and the strength of the former influences the strength of the latter.” – Larry Ackerman, an expert on organizational and personal identity and author of “Identity, is Destiny” and “The Identity Code.”
It’s all about identity. Social media gives you an opportunity to create your unique identity so people can identify you quickly. You will be hailed as a social media hero if you are able to develop a strong brand voice on social media through your unique approach.
Address people’s pain points, publish motivational stories, entertain and inspire people to do beautiful things, and your followers will admire you for that. The idea is to stand out from the crowd and touch their hearts through excellent posts and interactive approaches.
2. Keep Your Brand Current
You want to fully exploit the power and reach of social media, right?
To keep your audiences engaged, follow social media trends and create posts around those trends. Following the latest trends allows you to expand your audience and add new followers faster than any other technique.
When you follow trends, people share what you post, giving you even more reach. You can exploit the tremendous reach of social media only if you are able to build communities by creating content around current trends and events.
3. Focus On a Broader Audience
“You fail to see the endless sky when you have tunnel vision.” Subham Dwivedi
If you restrict yourself from talking about your products on your social properties, it won’t be easy to attract new customers. So occasionally, you should also post about things that relate to your products and customers. If your customers are young and active, talk about healthy lifestyles, diet, meditation, fitness, and workout regimes.
You can also talk about recreational activities, career advice, and employment opportunities. Additionally, you can mention your products along with the guidelines on how you can use them to achieve better results. This way, your customers will have your products in mind too.
Conclusion
Many people don't include social media marketing in their sales strategy. They consider it an additional activity for building the brand but something that has very little to do with boosting sales. However, it's far from the truth.
Social media has tremendous power to boost sales, build brands and create loyal communities. However, unless you know how to manage your presence on social media networks, you will not achieve anything concrete for your brand. The reason being, social media is not only time-consuming but also requires professional skills.
Outsourcing social media management will make your life easier and allow you to focus more on your core activities, especially business development and strategy. The social media experts at a white-label fulfillment service will boost your brand and build communities. It is the only way to scale and achieve steady growth in your fan base and sales leads.