It is not uncommon for a small business to spend much of their budget on advertising. Even with a good product, it can be difficult to sell if the client base isn’t there. Writers and other freelance professionals deal with the same issue, except that instead of marketing a product, they are selling a service.
In 2014, advertisers spent $15.3 billion in social advertising. Interestingly, this amount is less than what many marketing executives spend on print or broadcast advertising and accesses an even larger market. It’s no wonder sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become so popular among small business owners and freelance professionals.
Social Management Sites for More Efficient Marketing
With the creation of more and more social networking sites, it becomes important for you as a small business owner or freelancer to either choose a couple of platforms to use or find one place where you can manage all of your different social media platforms. Using only one platform minimizes your marketing efforts; as a freelancer, you need to expose your service to as many potential clients as possible.
Hootsuite is one of the more popular choices for managing your social media posts to best maximize your advertising efforts. In fact, it recently surpassed 15 million users globally and is being utilized by 800 of the Fortune 1000 companies. Hootsuite allow you to write messages and post them to your different accounts simultaneously or schedule them for some time in the future. It also provides data that can help you determine the viability of your marketing efforts.
Hootsuite is only one of the social management platforms available for marketing purposes. Others include
- Sprout Social
- Market Me Suite
- Sendible
- Socialbankers
- Crowdbooster
Which you choose to utilize will depend on your personal branding strategy and an intuitive idea of what kind of platform you are comfortable using. You should investigate them all thoroughly to see which would be a best fit for you.
Hiring an Outside Social Media Management Firm
While the above-mentioned management sites allow you to do the work of managing your social media on your own, there are a number of reasons you may want to consider paying these companies to manage your online presence:
You don’t have the time: The importance of social media management cannot be stressed enough. It is, however, time-consuming work to respond to online posts, monitor reviews on Yelp, and moderate discussion boards. You simply don’t have the time to focus on maintaining an online presence without giving up valuable work hours.
Cost: Inevitably you will consider hiring an employee or student to do the work for you. This is costly and comes with the risk of hiring someone who is not qualified for the position. In addition, you don’t have access to the advanced software that management companies have and would have to purchase the software out-of-pocket.
Expertise: Social media management companies know the marketing trends that are “in” right now and have the know-how to tailor your posts to focus on branding your product or service. They also have a more direct knowledge of optimization techniques to put your posts above the competition.
Managing your social media presence gives you the advantage of incorporating a variety of platforms and strategies into marketing your product or service.
