Who Should be The Person in Charge for Your Social Media

Hiring new or dedicating an existing employee to manage your social media was almost unheard of a decade ago. In the present day, however, businesses spend many hours per day on social media management and have dedicated budget for it. This is in order to ensure they send a clear and consistent message about their own brand to the existing and potential customers who visit their social media pages.

Does social media REALLY deserve to have its own dedicated employee?

If you have tried to manage a social media account in the past, you know that it can be very difficult to be consistent with it (post regularly). It can be hard to make it a priority over customers phone inquiries, budgets, recruiting staff (list goes on). If social media presence is an important part of your marketing strategy, however, you need to assign someone to do this job for you.

Who should I assign this job to?

The answer to this question depends on your specific business needs, however, answering the following might help with the decision:

• Is social media an important part of your marketing strategy?
• Do you have someone on staff who is social media savvy?
• Can you provide equipment and software in order to get the job done efficiently?
• Are you able to train and manage that type of employee on daily basis?

At corporate level, companies rely on dedicated person (or often more than one) from their marketing department to take on the responsibility of managing social media. Smaller businesses such as tennis clubs, on the other hand, often assign one of their existing employees to make posts on social media or hire an independent contractor.

Is having an in-house employee the appropriate approach?

There are a lot of benefits to having an in-house employee managing social media - they are normally more agile as they are involved with the day-to-day operations and changes, have appropriate content already available from the existing marketing materials, and they understand the company culture.

Yet, sometimes, it is not financially viable to have a dedicated employee for that. Low-wage marketing managers or interns need a lot of guidance and hands-on supervision. If you are able to afford an experienced marketer, you can often find someone who can operate independently and be very efficient with social media (and other marketing campaigns). You can also have a part-time employee, however, you would need to be prepared to recruit for that position frequently due to high turnover.

What about outsourcing social media to an agency or freelancer?

This approach to social media management is often easiest for most small and medium size businesses as it reduces the headaches of recruiting, training, payroll, etc. Also a lot of the time agencies and freelancers would be able to pass their marketing and social media experience to you and your team or provide special training for your staff.

What to watch out for

First, it is important to make sure that the agency or independent contractor is familiar with your industry and business needs. Second, be sure they have a good amount of experience and happy customers. And lastly, they should be able to provide customized offer that is specific to your business needs.