When it comes to automating your social media accounts, you can’t get more hands-off than when you start to outsource the task to somebody else! However, with social media outsourcing isn’t always simple. Should you outsource? And, if so, which aspects are best to outsource?
Should You Outsource Social Media?
Even if you’ve got your head around the idea that social media can be successfully automated (to a degree), outsourcing is a whole other ballgame. After all, shouldn’t your personality show through on your social media accounts? How can you trust anyone else to do that for you?
You can outsource your social media, but the way you go about it depends on your specific business.
For Individual Marketers/ Bloggers
If your business or blog is mainly about you, then you certainly can’t hire someone else to pretend to be you.
Think about either hiring a virtual assistant (VA) to search for interesting content you can share, which you can then check over before posting. You could also write your own social media updates in a spreadsheet and pass these over to your VA to schedule. Your VA can then monitor replies and let you know when you need to login personally.
In time, consider adding a VA to your account and being completely transparent and letting people know you’ve hired an assistant. If your assistant shows personality, too, then most people won’t mind!
For Bigger Companies
Most companies will have social media teams – you won’t find the CEO personally online and responding to all social media queries! If you do this, make sure to make your team human. Let them post personal updates from time to time, and be sure to include photographs of your team.
Remember, to manage social media the right way does take time, and you probably will need to outsource something as your business grows. As long as you go about it the right way then it will help grow your following even more.
Just remember, if your personality is a big part of your business, you still need to personally set aside some time to reply to people on social media even if your assistant is doing most of the work herself.
Where to Find A Social Media Assistant
If you’ve decided that outsourcing is right for you then it’s time to find an assistant. Here are some places to look for the perfect social media assistant:
- If you already have employees, start with them before looking outside. Someone who already knows your business is in a much better position to deal with your social media in a convincing way!
- If you already have a virtual assistant, why not ask them if they can schedule some updates?
- Ask people you know for recommendations
- Try online job sites like http://www.odesk.com, https://www.elance.com/, http://www.freelancer.com/, http://www.fiverr.com
Remember that you can hire someone just for research or social media strategy rather than writing the posts themselves.
How to Protect Your Privacy When Outsourcing
It’s understandable that you don’t necessarily want to give a VA access to all of your social media accounts, so make use of a scheduling service like Buffer or HootSuite that lets you add team members.
When you add team members, they will only have access to the areas you choose, and won’t be able to do anything like unfollow contacts, change your password and so on.
Using PLR for Social Media Updates
Another social media shortcut comes from PLR. PLR stands for Private Label Rights, and with such content you can use it as if you wrote it yourself. For example, you can buy PLR eBooks or articles and post them to your blog or create info products from them.
You can also buy PLR specifically designed for social media. These are usually in the form of tweets (140 characters or less) or longer posts that you can add to Facebook, Google+ etc. Ideally, you should use them as ideas, and rewrite them, at least slightly, to use as your own.
