Who Should You Trust Social Marketing: Staff, Agency, or Freelancer
We are spending more time than ever on social media. It’s the perfect place when you can connect with your potential customers. That’s why it’s so important to invest in social media marketing in today’s world.
But who should you trust with it? Is it better to hire your own staff? Should you use the help of a freelance consultant? Or is it better to reach out to an agency in order to outsource social media content?
Probably there is no single answer to this question, and a lot depends on your goals and the size of your company among many other factors.
What are the things you might want to consider before making your choice here?
- Goals and needs. It’s crucial to start by setting a list of goals. What do you want to achieve with your social marketing? What is your vision of success? What do you imagine to be the results of your marketing? Also, you might want to consider what you need to get there. Do you need more human resource; do you need some advanced instruments and tools? Or maybe an expert or a team with a great deal of experience is exactly what you need to succeed in achieving your objectives?
- Expertise.What level of expertise do you expect from your collaborators? Do you think it is the job that can be done by a junior specialist? Or do you need an expert? Is the team with members who have different experiences and perspectives is what you are looking for?
- Resources. What are the resources available to you? Here you cannot overestimate the budget that you have. Having a clear understanding of what you have can help you objectively see what the choices available to you are. Another thing to consider here is do you have enough resources to support a new employee? It takes not just financial resources but time and human resources that will be able to train this new staff member and help them at the beginning.
Now let’s discuss these three options and what the pros and cons of each one are.
Freelance consultant
Advantages:
- There are a lot of consultants with different levels of experience and backgrounds which makes it easy to pick just the perfect person for your goals;
- You do not have to spend additional resources on training and manage their work. You are also free from the responsibilities of hiring someone;
- You have a great level of flexibility. It both applies to the cost of work and terms of collaboration. Freelancers are great even for when you have quite a limited budget.
Disadvantages:
- There may not be too many instruments and tools accessible to you while collaborating with consultants;
- Freelancers won’t probably have a too deep understanding of your business (but that sometimes may not be the case, as they can learn);
- There might be some time management issues for freelancers just like for agencies because they usually work with several clients simultaneously;
Employee
Advantages:
- The person will have a deeper understanding of your company and its values;
- You can easily manage and oversee their work. An employer will do exactly the tasks you ask them to do;
- It is easier for an employee to see what they are paying for. A salary or hour rates make it simpler to manage the budget;
- Working hours makes it easier to monitor and manage your interaction with the person;
Disadvantages:
- Hiring a person means increased spending including taxes. Sometimes you even have to pay benefits;
- Adding a staff member is usually an option that provides you with less flexibility;
- In most cases, you will be the one providing the instruments as well as training your employee to use them;
- Hiring a staff member means that you can rely on expertise and experience of just this one person. It can be a sort of limitation;
- A new employee will need some time for acquisition and getting started;
Agency
Advantages:
- By collaborating with agencies you will have access to the expertise and flow of ideas provided by a team;
- Usually, partnering with an agency means that new advanced tool will become accessible to you and help you achieve your goals;
- Working with an agency provides you with some level of flexibility. Of course, it’s easier to end your collaboration than to dismiss someone from a job;
- Even though you will spend some time on meetings, usually interacting with an agency takes much less time than training and managing your employee;
Disadvantages:
- Businesses, in some cases, may have limited capacity to influence the outcome of the collaboration;
- Sometimes an agency you are working with may not show an extreme dedication to do everything perfectly, although it’s the case only for some agencies;
- An agency will probably have less understanding of your brand and its values compared to a hired person;
- In many cases, working with an agency can be quite costly;
It’s nearly impossible for many niches to do business successfully without reaching out to their audience through social media. That’s why SMM in digital marketing is in high demand.
There are quite a few options out there, and you should make the decision after you consider all the important factors such as your goals and available resources. Working with a consultant could be one of the cheapest ones. Hiring a staff member can be quite costly, but that can be an option for you if you are seeking to have more control over how the work is done. Although it may seem like reaching out to an agency can be very expensive, there are some social media marketing packages for small business. It means that you also can be quite flexible when it comes to the price.
