Farming Out Work While Keeping Control The SMB Dilemma

If you are a small to medium size  business owner chances are you have outsourced many critical parts of your digital business to experts. Nothing wrong with that, in fact it is more often than not a necessity. Due to the fact that expertise in the digital media space is increasingly niche, there may be multiple experts SMB’s owners and managers rely on.

One challenge comes in when too many providers have keys to the digital infrastructure (website login, social media login, google analytics). The much larger issue however is when owners and/or managers give away the keys to the experts. The cThru Media team has consulted with hundreds of SMB’s that simply don’t know how to log into their websites, don’t have access to their own analytical data, have a Facebook page that was created by a former employee.

I recently consulted with two different business owners of two completely different businesses. In both instances their web designer also claimed to be the SEO expert/provider.  After a brief review it was clear both  of their sites lacked proper structure for onsite SEO value. When I asked about speaking to the webmaster directly I got the same response from both owners - “I’m not sure - we don’t want to piss him off”.

Why were they so concerned about friction with the webmaster? Because in both cases the webmaster held the keys to the website, the YouTube page and social page. Their logic was if the webmaster was upset (two different webmasters btw), he would negatively impact their website and social sites. This is not a good position for a business owner to be in. The analogy is if the interior decorator and contractors had the keys to a brick and mortar business and the business owner was afraid to ask for them back.

The point here is not to knock hard working web development folks. The fact is web development is not an easy game. Web developers and web masters are critical assets for businesses.  Like media consultants generally, the better communication and client education, the better the experience. 

Business owners help themselves by having access to their online properties, social pages, analytical data, server info etc., and striving to understand what providers are doing to help their business. Business owners may not play all the instruments in the orchestra - but they (we) need to understand them to be the best conductors.