Why You Shouldn’t Hire An Outsider To Do Your Social Media — With One Caveat
BySocial Media Could Be Lucrative For A Scheister
I just read a blog post by an irritated Mark Schaefer, owner of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He called the post: “We’ve hit a new low: The shittiest social media marketing plan ever.”
Mark is ticked off that a traditional media company is trying to shore up their sagging revenue streams by offering cookie-cutter social media campaigns to businesses who don’t have the time, money, or know-how to do it themselves. I looked over what the media company is offering and got the same sick-to-my-stomach-someone-pass-me-a-bucket feeling I’m sure Mark got. Right before I published a long comment in reply, I thought, “This has to be a blog post on Q Web Consulting, so our followers can read it. Then maybe they’ll understand how easy it is to get ripped off by ‘Social Media Marketers.’”
Truth is, I could make a lot of money doing social media campaigns for other companies. But you know what? I’d be selling them a counterfeit that’s not going to hold up long-term, and may actually hurt their reputation in the end. And Mark and every other ethical social media marketer knows it’s true.
What Is A Social Media Marketer?
I hesitate to even call myself a social media marketer, even though that’s exactly what I do. I’m relatively new to social media marketing for our internet marketing company, New England Multimedia. Scott, New England Multimedia’s president and technical/creative director, never had time for social media, since his days are spent on the phone and in face-to-face meetings with clients he creates marketing collateral and web marketing tools for. I’ve been handling our social media campaign since the beginning of the year, when we realized my relationship skills, social media addiction (haha!), and writing gifts were a powerful package just waiting for the right channel.
Since I already loved everything about social media, I decided to jump in feet-first and start swimming. I had a lot to learn, and still do, but the positive results we’ve had in conversions, inquiries, and word-of-mouth market growth are powerful proof to our clients and friends that social media works. We’re climbing the ranks of the social media success stories, and we’ve hardly begun to leverage all that I’ve learned. And oh, have I learned a lot. Seriously.
They Want A Magic Pill
But now, because they see our results, our clients and friends both old and new are clamoring for us to give them what the media company Mark wrote about is offering. Scott comes back from meetings and reports that business owners are hungry for the results and they want to know if we can do for them what I do for New England Multimedia.
Here’s the problem, in a nutshell:
Social media works best when the relationship-building aspect between a brand and its market is the focus. Social media is one giant networking meeting that’s going on 24/7/365, and relationships — real relationships, where people talk to and care about one another — are the lucrative oil in the gears of the “machine.” Scott calls it “mutual buzzing.”
That’s lost if an outsider is hired.
As an example of why social media done by an outsider loses its power, imagine going to a networking meeting at a local restaurant or bar and striking up a conversation with a business owner you’ve been talking and listening to for weeks or months online, only to find they have no idea who you are or what you’re talking about, because they never wrote a single word of anything you read. You were just a number, a dollar sign. The relationship was a fraud from the start. They were never interested in you at all, except to get your business and your money.
However, A Caveat:
I think a company CAN hire an outsider and have a decent campaign IF they hire someone who:
1) has a passion for the company’s industry;
2) knows that industry like the back of their hand, from personal experience;
3) can write about that industry from a personal POV;
4) knows how to leverage social media, including bookmarking and blogging;
5) can write well (nothing worse for a business than poor writing);
6) has at least a basic understanding of SEO, or search engine optimization;
7) has a student’s desire to continually learn new ways of doing SEO, marketing, and social media;
8) is open to change and remains humble in their pursuit of better ways of doing things;
9) has great relationship skills; and finally,
10) makes it very clear on social media profiles and blogs that they write FOR the company, not AS the company.
It’s not the best case, but it’s better than no social media campaign at all.
What do you think about companies hiring outsiders to do their social media campaigns? And what would you add to the list?
Note: Because I want your comment to stand, please read our simple comment policy before replying! Thank-you!
Michelle handles all Social Media for New England Multimedia. You can contact her by email, on our Facebook, or on our Twitter.
Michelle, I love the passion and customer-centered focus of your post. Your clients are very fortunate to have you on their side!
Despite my rant, I do think it’s inevitable that there will be third-party management of social web activities. It’s already happening in buckets.
Your list of guidelines is a good one. I would also add that the executive leadership of the client company must simply be involved and intimately aware of the effort. If not this is what will happen:
“Hey Joe, I loved your tweet this week about innovation.”
“About what? Innovation? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You mean that’s not really you on there?”
… and it goes downhill from there.
Thanks again Michelle. This is such a good post I will add a link to the end of the orginal post as suggested further reading.
Mark, thanks so much! Your confirmation settled it for me. I absolutely agree that the leadership has to be involved.
I experienced the “imaginary conversation” you shared when I first started doing social media for our company, New England Multimedia. Someone Scott met at a face-to-face networking meeting called me “Scott” in a DM (direct message on Twitter) and I immediately corrected him. Then it happened again on Facebook in a comment directed at Scott, who rarely reads our Facebook page. Fortunately, we work together and I let him know immediately when there’s someone who wants to speak to him, or when a comment or question is something only he can answer.
But right away I saw the issue, and started cleaning up all our profiles and inserting “Michelle Quillin for New England Multimedia” everywhere.
Thanks again for reading and sharing. Your blog post sparked hours of discussion here. Hours.
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by NEMultimedia: Just wrote a blog post in reply to @markwschaefer post re:cookie-cutter social media campaigns. See it: http://bit.ly/Social4Hire...
Excellent post, Michelle.
What I find interesting is that for many hiring companies the main qualification for social media writers is a journalism degree.
Passion and industry-specific knowledge are irrelevant as long as the candidate has an impressive-looking resume with a journalism degree and is cheap enough to do the work.
Sadly, many “experts” play down on industry expertise. They say a good writer can write about anything from accounting to zoology.
And when projects flop, the same companies complain that social media is useless in their industries. But what’s useless is their HR departments and anyone who hired those apathetic people with journalism degrees.
Tom, you’ve hit on what I believe is the biggest issue with “hired gun” social media writers. A writer who cares about his reputation must invest in hours of research to write from a place of authority on a topic, even more so on a topic he knows little about! He reads experts, studies documents, and does whatever else it takes to have a firm enough grasp on the subject that he can at the very least hold his own.
A writer who doesn’t know an industry can’t possibly maintain the pace and quality of material required to consistently write, update, and communicate in the fast-paced world of social media without being exposed at some point by those “in the know.” He might be able to cobble together a few blogs using a company’s existing marketing collateral, but then he’s on his own. If someone asks him a question or comments in a way that presses further, he’s in trouble — and the company’s reputation is on the line.
Lack of passion for that industry will cause burnout as he frantically tries to keep up the pace of research required to maintain the image. His writing will become forced, stale and dry, and the few followers he had will drop off.
That’s the moment of reckoning where the truth is revealed: effective social media marketing requires much, much more than being able to write well.
Thanks so much for reading, commenting, and leading!
~ Michelle for New England Multimedia and Q Web Consulting
I’m with you on this one. I recently turned down the opportunity to run a Facebook Fan Page for a client because I didn’t know the company’s day-to-day programme well enough. Instead, I showed them how to get started and then acted as a mentor for their newly hired community manager.
There is no simple social media “pill” as you put it. Companies need to invest in hiring or retraining staff to cope with these channels (plural, because I see social communications as many channels!).
Of course, some agencies are going to sell social media systems to clients but I’m sure that in the long run results will speak for themselves.
Jon, I think helping clients get started in social media and then mentoring them as they learn the ropes is community in action. Good for you.
I’m not averse at all to social media marketers being paid for teaching and mentoring, either. One of the really exciting things I’ve learned about in my journey into the social media world is the webinar model, wherein a marketer offers a value-rich promotional webinar (e.g., “Getting Started With Facebook”) and then promotes a multi-part training series (e.g., “Using Facebook to Build Community”). The same live webinar model could be used to train a company’s staff and then mentor them, perhaps with once a week online meetings for Q & A and social media tips.
Thanks for your input, Jon!
~Michelle for New England Multimedia and Q Web Consulting
I am coming from an extensive background in publishing, a field where, by definition, you always have authors that are not directly involved in the field they are writing about, but know how to write and to communicate.
Actually a typical journalist makes sure to keep some degree of separateness from the companies or markets he is dealing with. There is a definite value in that model since you have people that are expert at communicating that can span multiple fields and explain them from an external viewpoint and also can talk about subjects where they don’t have conflicting interests most of the time.
This approach is fine when you talk about products, like some bloggers also do, but it weakens, in my experience, when you talk about people and what they do for a living, like business models, companies, marketing strategies and so on.
In the latter case the reader wants to be sure he is getting information directly from the person who is involved in the process because “external observers” and hired pens often don’t get it and provide an altered picture.
So coming back to social media, I agree with the caveats you indicate and it is a requirement for the hired pen that she really immerses in the scenario she is talking about. I still believe that a direct communication from the real protagonist is going to be more effective, but it is often impossible because of time constraints or simple inability to write.
Roberto Mazzoni for robertomazzoni.com
Your website is great. I m gonna bookmark, thank you.
Robert, thanks so much for commenting from a journalist’s POV.
You wrote, “This approach is fine when you talk about products, like some bloggers also do, but it weakens, in my experience, when you talk about people and what they do for a living, like business models, companies, marketing strategies and so on. In the latter case the reader wants to be sure he is getting information directly from the person who is involved in the process because ‘external observers’ and hired pens often don’t get it and provide an altered picture.”
Exactly!
~Michelle for New England Multimedia and Q Web Consulting
Great idea of post, thanks for this !
Thanks for the inspirational post
Glad you liked it, Spring, Miguel, and Kris!
Michelle for New England Multimedia & Q Web Consulting
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