Social media: Do it In-house or Outsource ?

Any marketing expert will know the importance and the increased popularity of social media, which is important for any business marketing plan. However, an important question lays in whether you would like to do this in-house or outsource.

When deciding whether you would like to give the privilege of working on your social media to an outsourced company or if you would like to do this in-house, you should consider the following points:

1. Your business. It is important that the person leading your social media knows your business well. Only you know your business as well as you do. You know what your company stands for and also what its values are, which must be reflected in your social media activity. If you are working on your social media with an external company, the professional must understand the internal culture of the business.

2. Being an ”insider.” As previously mentioned, only you know your business but also your staff do. Understanding the different departments and who you need to go to, to speak about certain things, is something that people in your company will know better than people from an external company that you outsource. This means that you must be prepared to give time to the outsourced company, otherwise you might not quite get your message across and they will not fully comprehend your business.

3. The future. You need to figure out what it is that you actually want from your social media. Usually, businesses want to use social media in order for their business to expand in the future. Your current staff might not be able to see what is in the future, as they may be very fixed on their specific role within your company. However, an outsourced professional from an external social media agency will be able to ask the right questions about where you would like your social media results to take you. They can work with you to develop key strategies for your social media marketing and create campaigns that truly reflect your business aims for the future. 

4. Professionalism. You must remember that creating social media sites is not as easy or as straightforward as working on a social media site in a personal capacity. Everything on the social media site must be professional and fully accessible to anybody who is on the site. Somebody in your department working on the social media marketing might not be as professionally minded as an external optimisation company, who has worked on many different social media sites in the past. This experience is invaluable to any company.