Why You Should Be Managing Your Social Media In-House

When you’re a small business, passionate about what you do, the thought of outsourcing would never occur to you for something like customer service. And while traditional marketing and P.R. might seem too daunting to take on with a small staff, here’s why your business’s social media should also fall on your shortlist of duties you just can’t imagine handing to someone outside your organization.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that social media is just another piece of your company’s advertising/marketing strategy. Yes, it’s become an essential element of customer communication and relevant businesses’ identities. However, just as the times have changed to make this channel so important, so have the expectations of your customers as to what you should be broadcasting through it. So while an ad agency or contractor may be able to successfully integrate into your business plan to provide traditional marketing and P.R., the same level of success through social media cannot be expected when you’re not taking a direct active role.

The reasons for this make a lot of sense once you hear them. Think about how individuals use social media, to communicate everything from the mundane to the magnificent. Look at the timeline of any active Facebook user. He or she is probably posting everything from a picture of the cookies she baked to a photo at the trail head of the backpacking trip he’s about to take. Once you realize that your company’s social presence should be as vibrant and varied as that of any individual, you understand that no contractor or ad agency could ever keep up with all that should be posted about your organization.

If you have at least five people on your staff, chances are you could identify one or two who would excel at managing your company’s social media, and with free tools like Hootsuite, and training available onsite and through our seminars, there’s no reason this responsibility can’t be brought in-house and its potential maximized through the efforts of your existing staff.

When you’re successfully managing your social media in-house, you can post the pictures on Pinterest of your pastries right as their coming out of the oven, you can add the photo on Instagram as soon as the used car hits your lot, and you can tweet about the new shipment of your patented gadgets the minute the truck unloads them. The essential immediacy of social media will go the distance for your company when you’re operating on this level. In this way, no contractor or ad agency can possibly compare to a well-trained staff, which is the same reason you’d never think about outsourcing in other areas.

When your staff needs education to reach this level of proficiency in social media management, that’s where Mustard Seed Social comes in. We offer on-site training and public seminars to augment the talents and creativity that are already a part of your organization. From post inspiration lists to a well-developed understanding of what is effective across various social platforms, Mustard Seed Social is the local source in the Northwest for excellent social media training. We eagerly look forward to sowing the seeds of successful social media for your company, if you’ll just put a mustard-seed sized amount of faith in us.