One of the biggest questions raised by business owners is “Why should I hire a social media manager?“.  Many companies enlist in the help of the person in the office who knows how to use Facebook the most.  That person is then given the added responsibility to create a business page, post content, answer questions, and so forth.  The reality is, if you as a business owner are serious about marketing your business through social media, then don’t you want it done correctly?  If you are like most small businesses, you also don’t want to spend any additional funds for it either, which is where the current employee gets stuck with the new job.  Social media is one of the most affordable and effective ways to market your business.  The problem is many companies don’t trust it to bring them any ROI because it’s a “new” technology.  There is never a second thought to run a $500+ advertisement in the local paper, but to put some of the marketing budget into social media takes a little more trust than the old tried and true ways of print advertising.  Here are a few reasons to get with the program…

1. Everyone is doing it

Yes it sounds cliché, however with over 500 million people on Facebook alone, over 100 million on Twitter, over 50 million bloggers, and over 300 million YouTube subscribers with an infinite number of videos uploaded each day…yeah, everyone is doing it.  Let’s go back to Facebook, the Grandaddy of them all.  Unless your target market is males over 75 years old, odds are, they are on Facebook.  Marketing 101…go where the people are.

2. DIRTFT (Do It Right The First Time)

My high school senior English  teacher taught me that, sad that I learned it senior year but oh well.  When you rely on the “most experienced Facebook user” in the office, there is a big chance your business page will not be set up correctly.  Facebook does not allow personal profiles to be used for business purposes, yet we see this happen every day.  How many “friends” do you have that are actually businesses?  Besides, Facebook Pages provide analytics and other features specifically for businesses.  Does your favored “expert” in the office know how to use Twitter? Set up a blog? Create a YouTube channel?  Know about meta tags? Know about SEO marketing? Know anything about RSS feeds? Customer service? Content marketing? Ever heard of Yelp? Four Square?  Pinterest? LinkedIn? These are just a *few* things a social media person should clearly understand to get your business results.

3.  Social Media is time consuming

Have you ever been on Facebook?  The average person spends 1.5 hours a day!  Your social media person should be posting on your Facebook and Twitter site 1-3 times daily.  Then of course checking back periodically throughout the day to check on comments, questions, and other customer service inquiries.  They should also be checking your blog for comments among other things, as well as Twitter, YouTube, Yelp, Urban Spoon, Google Plus, ect. for comments, reviews, and questions.  Does your office employee have the time available to all of this and more in addition to their current job duties?

While some businesses may answer all these questions with, “yes we can do this”, most others will not be able to answer an honest “yes”.  It takes money to make money as we all know in business and the #1 expense cut in budgets are in the marketing department.  Take a moment and really think about if that is the right move.  If you are not where the people are, how will that affect your business?  Think of other resources, like can you offer a raise to the person in the office taking on these job duties?  Does it make sense to hire a part-timer for social media?  Would it be beneficial to hire a contracted employee who specializes in social media?  Whatever you do, do something and I’ll leave you with this…

To those who say “It doesn’t pay to advertise”… A man wakes up in his advertised bed to his advertised radio. He brushes his teeth with his advertised toothpaste. He rides to work in his advertised car. When asked “Does it pay to advertise he says “No” until he advertises his unadvertised business for sale. Author: Unknown