Social Media Marketing Consultants & Experts for Hire

Posting an update on a fan page seems fairly easy. 

After learning to schedule updates ahead of time, an organization might feel like it can go weeks at a time not having to worry about what to post. 

 In fact, most social media networks are simple to work on, if there is enough time to do it, so why then does a social media manager, strategist or specialist cost so much?

What makes working with a social media specialist so expensive?

From the outside it might seem like being a

social media manager

is easy work. But, when companies want results that include large amounts of traffic, conversions from visitors, sharing from their followers and an ROI, simply throwing an update on each network each day isn’t enough to guarantee success.In fact, being a

social media manager, expert or leader

involves much more work than knowing what to post on Facebook each morning. Here are a few reasons your organization might need to rethink hiring an experienced manager to handle social media and everything it affects.

Every Social Media Platform is Different

Each social media website has a different audience, each works better with various types of content, and have their own unspoken rules for conduct.

Here is an example:

Pinterest

is obviously a visual platform, because you can’t post anything there without an image. But stock product images don’t pull nearly as much action as other photos. In fact, photos of people don’t work as well as photos with text on them. This makes a big difference if you are trying to harness ecommerce traffic from the site.

Linkedin

on the other hand doesn’t work nearly as well with content that is not professionally related. Memes and home photos can even turn off potential business partners, and connecting with them is the entire reason for being active on Linkedin.Without knowing the differences, social media campaigns can produce significantly different results, causing failure or success, based on the knowledge of the social media manager in charge.

Social Media Networking Changes Daily

With dozens of social media sites, there are bound to be regular changes, and these make a big difference to strategy, reach, traffic, and… well, any possibility to gain positive results from a presence.An example comes from

Facebook

, the largest of all platforms and the one that seems to make the most dramatic changes. Starting at the beginning of 2014 Facebook started drastically cutting organic fan page reach- this is the number of people who are able to see the updates made on a fan page. 

In fact, the cuts have been so large that many business owners are seeing their updates reach less than 6% of their fan base. 

Without realizing this, or having the information professional social media managers do, appropriate changes may not be made to a strategy, such as; either advertising to gain more reach, using a profile for business purposes, updating the fan page more, or moving efforts to another platform. In essence, the time and money wasted on not knowing about these updates can cost weeks to months of labor with poor results.

Social Media Cost for Testing

When working with an experienced manager, an organization benefits from the manager’s past campaign efforts. Instead of testing competitions, tools and tactics, they already know what works and can more quickly put together a campaign based on that information. This campaign is more likely to be successful than when run by someone with only personal social media experience.

For instance

– a social media manager knows which is the best tool for Facebook apps, that matches the terms and conditions of the site. When working with them, they’ll recommend the best tool and configure it for a company’s purposes.Without the manager, the company might purchase a tool that goes against the rules of the site and whose use causes fan pages to be shut down. Some tools that ask the user to share on their profile, this is against the rules and causes people to waste time, money and years of fan building, when their page is deleted.

Social Media Fits Into Several Areas of Marketing 

Some small businesses try to use social media as their only form of marketing and it often doesn’t work. They have no strategy in place to turn fans into customers- except to get their attention and hope it sticks (which rarely works when used alone).

Social media managers instead know that social media works best with other methods, and while being socially active on Facebook might be profitable, it won’t compare to a presence that leads followers to a website to become leads, and in the future customers.

Social media also contributes to almost any marketing campaign.

From TV ads, to email marketing, social media gives fans an opportunity to be heard, to share a company’s message and to stay in touch with that company in the future.Social fans are giving companies permission to market to them when they like or follow the company. This privilege is easily revoked if it is not handled appropriately- a manager knows this and works to keep that trust and relationship open.

Social Media Policies & Crisis Are Difficult

Even the largest brands in the United States sometimes do silly things. Bank of America, Progressive Insurance, even Taco Bell, and many others have had embarrassing situations on social media that have gone viral- and not to their benefit.

When crisis hits it requires a quick action, and social media managers understand that more than anyone.

Working with a manager helps prevent an organization from making hasty decisions that come back to haunt them months later. Actions such as deleting messages, ignoring reactions, not admitting mistakes or responding poorly in another manner add fuel to the fire and turn a simple misunderstanding into loss of followers, decreased sales and issues with investor boards. 

 A good social media manager will pull together a policy for action before a crisis ever happens. As for policies, a social media manager can also construct a code of conduct for team members in regards to their updates about the company. 

This can apply to both company accounts and personal accounts, based on the preferences of the legal and marketing teams.These policies need to be fair to employees, yet show the company will take action, if and when necessary.

They Protect A Brand’s Value

When it comes to business, not all attention is good attention. Social media managers understand the value of your brand and work to not only keep it positive in the social eye, but increase the value of it as well. They understand public relations and the relationship it has with social media.Based on the popularity of a company, public relations becomes a larger issue. With that responsibility to protect the brand, a social media manager needs to make decisions that will protect integrity and make a brand look good to its fan base, even during difficult times.

Customer Service Gets A Helping Hand

When you work with a social media professional they know that customer service is a major element in social media. Based on your company’s policies they can respond to inquiries, report issues, look for feedback and make sure no fans fall through the cracks causing bad reviews. 

In essence, they are an additional team member for the customer service department and can provide valuable information about the sentiments of the fans and recommendations for handling issues.

Social Media Managers for Hire

A social media manager, like any other expert, has been at practice in social media for years, has invested thousands of hours or time into understanding audiences, platforms, content production, analytics, copy and relationship building. 

 All of this goes into the price of working with them. In return for the investment, companies have a business partner who strives to provide positive relationships with fans and followers, improves public relations, customer service, and policy all while nurturing relationships into an improved bottom line. 

 If you have any more questions about the costs of social media marketing, go ahead and comment below, I’ll do my best to help you figure it out.