There are two parts to social media – strategy and tactics.
In my consulting business, I’m working with a growing number of clients that need strategic plans for social media – plans that take into account their business, the competitive landscape, their objectives/goals, and resources. It is exercise in which I can be successful as a outsider by bringing my expertise and experience to the table.
But when it comes to tactical execution, I’m uncertain whether social media can be outsourced a on a day-in day-out basis in the long-term. One of the keys to social media is authenticity, passion and transparency. In other words, you need to be drinking the corporate Kool-Aid.
As an employee, it’s easy to believe in the corporate cause because, after all, you’re getting a paycheck on a regular basis to wave the flag. But what about non-employees? Can they effectively run social media programs on behalf of corporate clients? Can social media guns-for-hire do all the things on the social media landscape in a way that’s real and authentic?
My gut says “no”. No matter how well-paid or motivated, it’s difficult for a non-employee to do as good a job with social media because they’re not living and breathing the company and the brand. I’m not suggesting it’s impossible and I’m sure there are exceptions to the rule but social media strikes me a very internal activity if it’s going to be done as well as possible.
That said, I do think social media services are going to emerge to serve the needs of corporate clients. This will be based on the fact that social media activity is hard to scale so it will be seen as an operating expense that some companies will try to manage by having some activities outsourced. This could be daily monitoring and updates of Twitter and Facebook. It could be responding to comments, or answering questions.
In this scenario, I can envision a warehouse full of social media savvy worker bees pounding away 7/24 to meet the needs of multiple clients. In many respects, it would be a lot of like the call centers that do work for lots of companies.
Still, I do believe that the best and most creative social media programs will be internally led and driven. These programs will thrive because they’ll be within the corporate culture and strategic ecosystem with daily interaction with the company and its people.
Note: This post was inspired by Valeria Maltoni (aka The Conversation Agent), who has an extensive post that draws views from a variety of people about whether social media can be outsourced.
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I tell clients it’s possible in the short term, but the longer term goal should be to hire or integrate these skills inside the organization. Monitoring, measurement, strategic counsel, etc. can always be outsourced, but I agree that the day-to-day community management is best handled from inside a company.
Good post. I reached a similar conclusion to you before embarking on a consultancy role. Even if clients could be convinced about the benefit of outsourcing their engagement, before long they would see this approach as less cost-effective, more hassle and too shallow. Even if a hypothetical outsourced social media team were fantastic and cheap, someone client-side will eventually turn up who is a huge fan of social and wants to get in on the action. There’s a difficult future for any social media agency (or consultant) that thinks they can follow this model.
The clear exception is monitoring and analysis – which is time-consuming and requires more specialist skills than engagement (which, as you quite rightly point out, requires above all transparency, honesty and passion).
Also, don’t ignore the need for social “productions” (e.g. events, assets), campaigns and pre-existing networks.
If companies aren’t familiar with social media they shouldn’t try to dive into it themselves. It’s not just posting tweets, and checking facebook. It takes a professional.
Social media can boost your business and life but depends upon how to use it how to manage it, many of us are aware about it but forget to use it as a professional.
An effective social media campaign requires an understanding of your customers values. How and why would you want to outsource that? It’s akin to outsourcing your company’s marketing strategy; no, it’s worse than that. How can you hope to partner and engage with your customer if you pay someone else to do it?
You can outsource tactical things like tools, training and measurement. But outsourcing the interaction will be seen as artificial and will ultimately backfire.
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