The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Your Social Media Management.

It was 9pm on a Thursday night and Jessy was slouched on her couch, mindlessly scrolling through her company's Facebook and Instagram feeds. While her friends were out enjoying their weekend, she was scheduling posts, responding to comments, and anxiously analysing the analytics reports from their latest social media campaigns.

"I can't keep doing this," she thought with a sigh. Social media had become a second full-time job on top of her actual full-time job running marketing for her company's new product line. What had started as a free way to promote their brand was now consuming her nights and weekends with never-ending tasks and upkeep.

Jessy had heard of companies outsourcing their social media management to third-party agencies or contractors, but she had been hesitant to consider it herself. "How much would it cost?" she wondered. "And is it really worth hiring someone else when I'm already so ingrained in our accounts and strategies?"

If Jessy's situation sounds familiar, you're definitely not alone. As social media has evolved into a cornerstone of modern marketing, businesses of all sizes are grappling with the decision of whether to keep social media efforts in-house or outsource to external professionals and agencies.

There are pros and cons to each approach that are important to carefully weigh. Let's take a closer look at some of the biggest factors to consider:

Pros of Outsourcing Social Media

1. Access to expertise and specialisation

Managing an effective, strategic social media presence requires a very specialised and continually evolving skill set - from copywriting and visual content creation to analytics, paid advertising, social listening, community management and more.?

Outside agencies that focus solely on social media as their core offering tend to have robust teams with dedicated experts across each of those areas. It's their singular focus, whereas your in-house team is likely juggling social media as just one piece of a much broader marketing remit.

2. Frees up internal bandwidth

Speaking of juggling responsibilities, outsourcing your social media can provide a huge relief when it comes to the daily time and bandwidth crunch marketing teams face. Planning, creating, publishing, engaging, reporting and more adds up quickly into a sizable workload.

By shifting those recurring social media tasks off your plate, your internal team can refocus their energy and efforts on other high-impact priorities. No more working weekends to keep up with the grind!

3. Objective, outside perspective

It can be easy to develop homebrewed blind spots when you're too close to your own social media channels and strategies day in and day out. An external partner brings a fresh, objective perspective to identify potential new audiences, trends and creative opportunities you may have missed.

4. Cost-effective and scalable

While many businesses assume outsourcing is costlier than in-housing, the opposite is often true when you account for all the personnel expenses, subscriptions, tools and other overhead fees associated with social media management. Agency pricing models provide cost-effective access to comprehensive services that can nimbly scale up or down as needed.

Cons of Outsourcing Social Media

1. Less direct control and brand intimacy

Of course, one of the biggest downsides of handing off your social media presence to an outside vendor is you sacrifice a degree of direct control and institutional brand knowledge. Even with thorough onboarding and guidance, external agencies won't understand the nuances of your brand voice and customer relationships in quite the same way your internal team does.

2. Communication complexities

With any outsourced service, there are potential communication challenges to navigate in terms of miscues, crossed signals and slow response times to urgent needs or questions. You and the agency will need to nail down crystal clear processes, permissions and points of contact to mitigate these risks.

3. Intellectual property concerns?

Particularly for highly proprietary products, campaigns or innovations, there can be IP and data privacy concerns around handing over that inside information to third parties. Be sure you have robust NDAs and protections in place.

4. Potential hidden costs?

While the agency's core services may appear cost-effective, there can often be hidden fees, overage charges and nickel-and-diming for anything considered an "add-on" service. Be sure you have a transparent, all-inclusive pricing structure with no surprise costs.

So those are some of the biggest pros and cons to mull over as you decide whether to outsource your organisation's social media efforts or not.

If you do bring on an external agency, be sure to include internal stakeholders from marketing, sales, customer service and other teams in the evaluation and vetting process. Their input and buy-in will be crucial, as social media impacts many corners of the business these days, far beyond just the marketing function.

And if you choose to keep social media in-house, look into affordable tools that can streamline your workflows and automate tedious tasks like scheduling and reporting. Social media management platforms, design tools and content libraries can provide a huge assist.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution that's right for every company - it will depend on your unique situation, available resources, priorities and objectives. For many businesses, adopting a hybrid model can make sense, outsourcing the heavy lifting while keeping higher-level strategy and brand governance in-house.

At the end of the day, the rise of social media has opened an incredible opportunity for brands of all stripes to directly connect with their audiences and cultivate thriving online communities. Whether you go external or internal, the key is to invest the proper time, resources and strategy into guiding and nurturing that relationship.?

Social media may have started as a free marketing tactic, but these days, it's a full-fledged commitment requiring the same focus and professionalism as any other core business operation. Decide what model makes the most sense for you, strap in and enjoy cultivating your thriving online presence!