“I’m starting a business, should I run my own social media pages? Do I have the time to create content and post on all of them?”
These are questions that many people have asked themselves at one point or another when starting a business. There are so many options and questions when deciding how to handle running your social media pages as a business owner. Should I run it myself? Should I be more serious and business-like? Should I hire someone? It’s confusing!
While we can’t make these decisions for you, we can take a couple minutes to talk about some things to consider when figuring out what is best for you.
Do It Yourself Social Media Management
Doing it Yourself (DIY)
Running your own social media platforms is a great way to show your company exactly how you want it to be perceived. This means you can show people products that you want and give your business a personality of its own. You can be funny, you can be caring, you can even be absolutely rude and intolerable if you’d really like! — But how you post and interact will be how your company is viewed.
There are a couple downsides to running your own social media, though. You should have a good understanding of how each platform works and what your analytics are meaning for your future posts. You must spend a lot of time creating and scheduling posts, so you stay relevant to your followers and algorithms. You cannot stop looking for things to post while also finding time to run and develop your business.
Outsourced Social Media Management
Outsourced Management
Outsourcing your social media to a company or freelance individual is a good option for growing small to medium sized companies. This gives you all that free time back that you were using for content creation and scheduling and lets you focus on growing your business instead.
You can work with a team that understands how each platform works and can show you how things are performing. Depending on who you’re working with, some will create engaging content for you, while others will only use content that is supplied to them.
The common negatives to outsourcing your social media platforms are something to consider, as well. You are having another individual post for you, so you must make sure they are a good fit for what your business is doing and that they also have a basic understanding of what they’re posting about. If you don’t, then posts can come off as impersonal, or just uneducated. Obviously, no one wants to be represented that way. If you have a business where content needs to be shot every day and you need someone else to shoot that content, outsourcing likely isn’t for you just due to the fact that your provider will only be there at scheduled times.
Staff Hire Social Media Management
Staff Hire
So, what about hiring someone directly to your staff to run your social media? That’s a great option for medium to large sized businesses. If your business is large enough to support the extra cost of hiring someone directly, you can be at a middle ground between DIY and outsourcing. This gives you some ability to have contact with the same person every day who is posting your content to come up with strategies and control your social personality. You will also have someone there to create content whenever you’re needing something on the spot.
Some things to think about when considering this option is that it’s likely the most expensive option. Hiring someone directly means that you should likely have a marketing team and budget to fully utilize the hire to their potential. There are plenty of people who know how to be successful on their personal social media pages but acting as a company is a very different venture. You’ll also still have to take a lot of time to find or groom this person to represent your brand how you want it to be represented.
So, are you ready to make the decision of what might be right for you, or do you have more questions? Feel free to shoot us an email at any time and we can try to figure out what the right option for you is!
