Technology Blog

These days Social Media Consultant are popping up quicker than you can say “Facebook”. In this article we’ll look at both the benefits of having one, such as helping leverage social media, as well as the draw backs.

How Can A Social Media Consultant Benefit My Business?

A good Social Media Consultant can deliver a number of benefits for your business, here are a few of the main ones:

Setting Goals and Objectives

Many businesses jump on to different social platforms such as facebook and twitter and start posting things up aimlessly. While most will enjoy an initial spike in new followers or fans – this will soon peter out and they’ll lose interest in the whole exercise. A good Social Media Consultant understands the vital importance of solid Goals and Objectives in achieving social media success, and will help you set these up from the outset.

Developing an Engaging Content Strategy

Developing engaging content for your target audience is key if you want to leverage social media properly. A Social Media Consultant can help you develop a schedule to keep your content creation on track, and also show you the best ways to source and curate content which will be relevant and interesting to your target audience.

Measuring Performance and ROI

One of the things businesses who are inexperienced with marketing on social media struggle with the most is measuring the effectiveness and of their efforts and ROI. However, if you want to leverage social media effectively, it’s extremely important to be in top of this. A Social Media Consultant will be able to help you select the appropriate tools for measuring and tracking your social media activities, and setting up a system to keep track of your ROI.

Saves you time and effort

An experienced Social Media Consultant has already done the hard yards in learning what does and doesn’t work as you try to leverage social media for the benefit of your business. While it will cost you a certain amount to employ the services of a consultant, this may be considerably less than the cost of time and mistakes you would make in trying to learn social media yourself.

Are there any draw back with hiring a Social Media Consultant?

Absolutely, all you have to do is jump on google and you’ll find plenty of articles telling you why you shouldn’t hire a social media consultant. Here are a couple of the main draw backs:

Shonky Consultants

These are the reason for the majority of articles telling you not to hire a social media consultant. There’s a lot of people out there charging exorbitant fees saying they can help your business leverage social media so you’ll be rolling in dough quick smart. That should be the first warning signal though – social media like anything else requires hard work and persistence to provide rewards, and you should be wary of anyone who tells you otherwise.

Loss of Control

Some Social Media Consultant’s can be pretty stubborn in their knowledge of what works and what doesn’t when you’re trying to leverage social media. This can turn out badly when a business owner/manager is unable to relinquish control and find themselves at logger heads with the consultant.

Does my Business need a Social Media Consultant?

This is a bit like asking “do I want my business to grow?” So in short the answer is yes. The key though is finding a good Social Media Consultant and having them operate in the capacity that’s right for your business. What I mean by this is that each business will benefit in different ways from the hiring of a Social Media Consultant. For example; a very large business with an in-house social media team would benefit by getting new ideas and fresh ideas from a consultant. A medium size business who has one or two employees responsible for social media would benefit from a consultant who can train those staff and provide ongoing guidance for them. A small business without staff dedicated to social media may benefit from a consultant who can run their whole campaign for them, and help them leverage social media that way. If you can find a good social media consultant, they’ll be able to tell you what’s right for your business.