Do you have real people in your company in place to help with social media everyday? The fact is that your social channels need to be vibrant, evolving places where you are continuously posting original content, sharing relevant links, and engaging with others on a regular basis. And for product- and service-based organizations, you can count on them becoming a source of leads and customer support. If you are serious about social, you can hire an amazing social team (like us!) to help, but you’ll need some of your staff and/or even executives to be involved.
All the nifty goals, tools and fancy looking channels will do you nothing if you don’t have real people engaging and responding every day. These people must be heavily involved with the everyday business activities and active in the industry. This is why it is difficult to hire someone to do social media for you if you don’t plan on being involved.
First off, make sure you ask the company you are hiring a few questions to be sure of your future success:
- Who will execute my social media strategy?
- Which platforms are best for my business?
- How will I know if my efforts are working?
Now that you’ve found the right company to manage your Internet marketing and SMO (Boomtown!) and understand their process, the next step to your success is understanding you can’t just step away and never look back. Businesses involved in social media thrive when internal staff provide the professionals (like us!) with great content from inside the company (photos from company outings, news updates, hiring updates, etc.).
Lack of engagement from your company would be similar to 50% of the world using email with big CEOs holding out; or 50% of your customers shopping online but no CEOs trying it. More than half the U.S. population has eagerly embraced sites like Facebook and more than a third are using Twitter, yet only 7.6% of Fortune 500 CEOs have bothered to jump on Facebook, and just 4% have opened Twitter accounts. All in, 70% of big company CEOs have no presence on social networks. The opportunity is out there and companies that take control of their own SMO capabilities will be more successful.
You can see the shocking social CEO report here.
- The average number of followers for Fortune 500 CEOs with Twitter accounts is 33,250.
- Rupert Murdoch of News Corp, with 249,000 followers, is now the most-followed Fortune 500 CEO, surpassing HP’s Meg Whitman who was in the number one spot when the survey was taken.
- Ten Fortune 500 CEOs have more than 500 LinkedIn connections, while 36 CEOs have 1 LinkedIn connection or none.
- Six Fortune 500 CEOs contribute to blogs, and only one of the six CEOs, John Mackey of Whole Foods, maintains his own blog.
- Zero Fortune 500 CEOs are on Pinterest.
To avoid being mentioned in these negative reports, there are a few steps you must follow to get the most out of social media outsourcing.
- Fill out the questionaire that your social media company gives you and give them as much information and possible (we have a great questionnaire that really gets to the heart of your goals and brand).
- Introduce the new company to your employees and announce it has a big endeavor you stand behind.
- Set up an employee training session on social media (we train for you)
- Find which employees have the time and talent to help with blog writing or photography.
- Have a best practices guide (we give you this!)
- Talk to your social media outsourcing company about tools that make life on networking sites easier. (HootSuite, TweetDeck.. etc.)
A great social media strategy will help establish your company as a thought leader. The end result would be the integration of your social media efforts with your overall marketing strategy.
If you have more questions or don’t know where to begin deciding what part of social media is best for your brand, email us here.
Use our chart below to find the platforms that are right for you based on your key goal.
Special thanks to Brian Solis, Forbes.com, Jason Yormark: Social Pro, Domo.com and Domo’s CEO, Josh James.