Social media marketing can seem like one of the easier to understand marketing tactics because most of us own a personal social media account or two (or three, or four…). However, that doesn’t mean running your company’s social media accounts is a task just anyone within the company can take over. Social media for business has its own rules and is certainly its own animal.

Last year, there were over 3.48 billion social media users worldwide. Because of its popularity, social media is clearly a huge marketing opportunity for businesses. Social marketing efforts can greatly increase your brand visibility, help you gain new customers, and provide you with relationship-building opportunities for your current customers.

If you’ve been trying to decide whether or not to outsource your social media marketing, here are five reasons why you may want to take the plunge.

If you’ve been trying to decide whether or not to outsource your social media marketing, here are five reasons why you may want to take the plunge.

1. Time is money and social media management takes time.

Time is the number one reason companies decide to outsource their social media. Social media management is a task that requires constant attention and most certainly should not be simply posting on Twitter and Facebook when an hour clears up in your schedule. You will need a strategy behind your efforts, and you will need to post frequently and consistently.

Additionally, 42% of consumers expect a response on social media within 60 minutes. Letting your social media fall to the wayside because you have a trade show to attend or a board meeting to prepare for can damage your reputation.

Another benefit of responding quickly is that on certain platforms like Facebook, you can earn badges that let your customers know you are responsive and will respond instantly to their inquiries.

On top of responding immediately, you also need to continuously monitor the conversations that are happening, regularly test different methods, and track your brand mentions constantly.

2. Access to social media experts.

No matter what you are outsourcing, the greatest benefit that comes from it is the expertise that you gain that is currently not available to you. A social media expert uses the knowledge you have of your customer, coupled with knowledge of data to evolve your strategy. Additionally, getting a fresh perspective from someone outside of your company can be extremely beneficial!

Instead of trying to carve out hours each week to dedicate to something that is not within your own wheelhouse, you could have an expert who lives and breathes social media working for you. They are staying on top of all industry trends, platforms, and tools so that you don’t need to. Using hashtags correctly, knowing what size photo to use on Pinterest, and knowing if TikTok could be leveraged for your business are just a few of the things an agency will be able to handle with ease. Agencies will also be able to test different content with your audience and measure your return on investment.

3. Access to an agency’s tech stack.

Agencies are typically paying for memberships to different tools like Hootsuite, Agorapulse, NetBase, HubSpot, Canva, and Shutterstock. If you were to pay for all of those industry-leading technologies yourself, your costs would add up pretty quickly. On top of that, you would also need to train an internal employee on the different technologies in order to use them to their full potential.

4. Outsourcing your social media can save your business money.

Outsourcing is typically more cost-effective than hiring someone in-house. You’ll need to factor in the time it takes to hire, train, and develop new team members into your costs. On top of that, the average annual salary of a social media manager is $51,000 and growing. One of the benefits of hiring an agency over an in-house specialist is that you get an entire team for less than the price of one hire. That team could include a project manager to ensure everything gets done in a timely manner, an online social media manager dedicated to the strategy of your social media efforts, an account manager to help assist the social media manager, and a graphic designer that ensures everything has the same look and feel. That is a lot of people with different strengths working together on your company’s social accounts! You also run the risk of your hire not fitting into your company culture and not working out.

Another way outsourcing your social media can help you cut costs is if your business has a call center. The average cost of a social interaction is only $1 compared to $6 for a call center interaction.

5. Most agencies can help you with your additional marketing-related needs.

Another benefit of outsourcing your social media to an agency is that they often have additional services they can provide to you. Have a trade show coming up? Many agencies have designers that can help you design collateral, booths, giveaways, and more. Time to update your website? Many agencies have website design and development expertise as well. Need an explainer video to help your buyers better understand your business and solution? Many agencies can also help with your multimedia needs.

If you are still questioning whether or not outsourcing is right for you, here are some additional reasons to outsource:

• If you don’t have anyone in-house that fully grasps and understands social media for business.
• If you don’t have enough office space to hire a social media marketing team in-house.
• If no one in-house has the time to thoroughly manage your social media marketing.
• If you don’t have the technology you need to support your marketing efforts.
• If you don’t have the time to stay sharp on social media marketing trends or on social media marketing tools.