When social media became mainstream many years ago, businesses realized the power it had and—ultimately—the connection it built between them and their consumers. They then hurried to create their respective social accounts and began sharing content with no clear strategy or end goal in mind.
As brands adapted, the time needed to execute these social accounts increased. Followers and brand advocates crave quality content that provides value, and businesses do their best to provide that. BUT, it takes time, energy and investment. A lot of brands think social media is the easy part; however, it is actually one of the more time-intensive projects that requires a great deal of effort and thought.
If you feel like your social strategy is plateauing and needs a shock to the system, it may be time to turn to an agency for help. Don’t know if you’re ready to make the leap? Keep these things in mind:
- Cohesive Strategy: When working with an agency, you’ll come to find that the good ones (like us) do everything they can to know every facet of your brand, audience, voice, goals and overall strategy. Their social media guru (that would be me) will then work with the team to create a social specific strategy that takes all of those aspects and applies them to your social media efforts. They will develop specific tactics designed to increase social media engagement and reach, along with KPIs relevant to your business.
- Time: To be honest, an effective social media strategy and execution of said strategy takes a lot of your energy. When most clients come to us requesting social media services, it is because they feel the pain of managing multiple social media accounts on their own. They either don’t know what they are doing, don’t have the resources or they simply don’t have enough hours in the day to focus their energy on that deliverable. With all of the other moving pieces in marketing, social media often takes a back seat and is not given the attention it deserves.
- Reporting & Analyzing: A dedicated social media partner will do one thing that you probably aren’t doing now, which is reporting and analyzing the data. It is hard to look to the future when you aren’t learning and growing from the past. On a weekly and monthly basis, we analyze everything that is going on with our clients’ social accounts and adjust our strategy to maximize your investment and continue to get results.
- Ask the Experts: Sometimes, you just have to admit that you aren’t the expert. While an effective social media strategy is easy to understand, it is often more difficult to execute. When done correctly, social media provides a huge value to businesses—so why would you delegate that to someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing?
If you are considering outsourcing your social media but aren’t sure if it is the right choice for you, ask yourself these three questions:
- Are you only posting to your social platforms when you think of an awesome post or have spare time?
- Are you delegating social media responsibilities to someone who doesn’t understand or like social media?
- Is all of your content focused on your business without providing value to your followers?
If you answered yes to any of these, it’s time to outsource your social media strategy to a team of experts (cough cough* us). To learn a little bit more about our process and see how we can help, shoot us a note at info@thejamesagency.com!
