When to Pay Someone to Help With Your Business’ Social Media

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Social media started out easy for business owners.  Back in the day, you’d open a Facebook account with the name of your business, and then go in search of “friends”.  Then, things got complicated.  First, they said businesses couldn’t have individual accounts, then they created groups, then they created pages, then they made it harder and harder for businesses to gain an audience without paying for advertising.  And, that’s just Facebook!  Add in Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and others, and it gets rather confusing.

If you’re a business owner, how do you know if it’s time to hire a social media manager (either as a full time worker or on a contract basis) to help you?

If you don’t have the time to do it right.  This is a pretty obvious one.  If you don’t have the time to do the job right, that must mean your business is doing pretty well.  It can be time-consuming to come up with content to share online, like articles, photos, videos, or even simple social media posts.  When you add in managing comments and questions, it can get to be too much if you’re trying to run a business at the same time.

If you don’t understand social media for businesses.  Most everyone uses at least one social media outlet these days, but promoting your business on social media is different than liking and commenting on your sister-in-law’s baby pictures.  If you’re not sure how it’s different, it’s best to find someone who does.  It’s far too easy these days to get into trouble by offending the wrong people online.

If you’re not a good writer.  You don’t have to be Tolstoy to create a good social media post, but you don’t want it to be riddled with grammatical and spelling errors either.  People aren’t likely to want to come back to read more of your posts if they have trouble deciphering them.

If what you’re doing isn’t working.  Do you find that when you post something on Facebook, no one likes it, shares it, or comments?  Do you not get any retweets on Twitter or likes on Instagram?  Everyone has a post or two that don’t do as well as expected, but if that’s the case with nearly everything you’re posting, it’s time to think about getting some help.

If you’ve been burned before.  A lot of business owners push their social media management onto the nearest young employee.  They’re young … they must know about this stuff, right?  Not necessarily.  Many, many companies have ended up looking bad because they went this route.  I’ll go back to an earlier point, where I said that using social media is not the same as knowing how to manage a social media presence for a business.

[Editor’s note: This blog post was turned into an episode of my podcast, Startup BizCast!  To listen, click the right-facing arrow below. If you want to talk with EndGame PR about helping with your social media presence, all you have to do is contact us!]