Outsourcing Social Media Management
Social media shapes how your practice is perceived, so the decision to manage it internally or to outsource it should be weighed carefully. Building a social media campaign for your practice can be a very time-consuming process and running a small business means you do not have time to manage all those social media platforms yourself. In fact, you will probably only have time to manage one. On average, it takes an small business nearly two hours a day to successfully run just one social networking site.
Every social media page, campaign or piece of content should be part of a bigger strategy that ties back to brand awareness, brand loyalty , bringing in new patients, etc. If you’re working with a good agency, they’ll help you figure out the bigger picture before you get started.
So, how will you decide what to talk about online? Well, you can’t just talk about yourself! A content strategy is critical to success, whether it’s dealing with a blog, social platforms, or an overall digital strategy. So what are the benefits of working alongside a digital agency?
1) More Time For Your Business
One of the most obvious advantages of outsourcing social media management is that it saves you time. Social media is a big job and these extra minutes can all add up, especially for small practices. More and more practices are taking the step of joining the big social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, you may have come across some of these pages and thought why aren’t we doing something like this? Social networking is a form of advertising, and advertising takes a lot of time and consideration. You can share and tweet to increase your social presence, but your posts need to be engaging, witty and smart, so that they integrate business and consumer needs. Although it may only seem like a quick 140-character tweet or a short Facebook update, it takes time to produce quality content. If you’re a small business or a start up, you don’t have the time to manage your social media activities, yet you want an active presence over all the major networks.
The value of social media is much harder to justify than more traditional forms of marketing, but that doesn’t mean you can afford to abandon pages when things get too hectic. When you get the help from an agency, this is their sole responsibility, so you can guarantee it won’t fall behind. You’re making sure that your messages are going out, you’re gaining followers and answering questions
The minutes you spend on social media management can quickly become hours, taking you away from what you do best.
2) Valuable Expertise
Social media has spread from Facebook and Twitter to newer platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ and Snapchat, it can be really hard to stay up to date with trends and technology updates. Having a team of experts that dedicate their days to staying up-to-date on technology trends keeps you one step ahead.
The expertise you can get from a marketing professional is invaluable. By working with an agency you get access to their knowledge and expertise about social media marketing which you can apply to your business. A good social media service will take the time to research your niche and explore key developments within your industry so that relevant content is produced on your behalf.
Though no one knows your practice better than you do, sometimes one needs to get some objectivity to understand your company from a consumer point of view. Things change quickly on social media. A professional social media agency will almost certainly have a more in-depth working knowledge of social platforms than your company does. It could mean the difference between gaining a new client, and losing out to a competitor. Having a team dedicated to managing your accounts full-time means there will always be someone on hand to make your followers feel appreciated.
3) Budget
So how do you know you’re getting value for money?
Although social media services come at a cost, an effective social media service involves much more than just liking and tweeting — a good social media service will have the appropriate mechanisms to track the results of your social media activity.
If you were to take it on in-house, then you would probably need to think about changing a current employee’s job role so that they can invest their working day in social media. Then you will also need to consider who will take on their previous role. This could lead to an unnecessary recruitment, which requires investment of both time and money
…Time is money and social media takes time!
If you would like any further information then give the Dental Design team a call on: 01202677277.
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