Social Media Marketing Services: What’s Right for Your Business

Before 2014 ended, Forbes.com reported that 15 new social media companies will take off this year. And they did.

This fact shows one thing: Social media isn't going away anytime soon.

But with so many choices, deciding where to focus your marketing efforts is difficult.

In this case, it would be reasonable to get help from social media marketing specialists. Because they make it their job to keep up with industry trends and strategies.

Your social media needs will differ from other businesses though, since you need to factor in your budget, marketing knowledge, and staff availability.

It’s essential then that you get a service aligned with your current situation.

So here’s a list of SMM services. As you go through them, see which one fits your business needs.

Social media training

Digital products, webinars, and local, international, or virtual conferences are how social media training is delivered. All these aim to help you learn the ropes involved in social media marketing.

This sounds wonderful, but in order to craft and maintain an effective campaign you need to:

1. Comprehend the basics of social media
2. Dedicate time to plan and implement your strategy
3. Stay current with both marketing trends and platform updates
4. And monitor, analyse, and test new strategies if needed.

These are all needed so you can see if your social media efforts are helping you meet your goals.

Though you could assign one of your in-house staff to take care of it for you, commitment on the part of your employee is called for.

Also, this company representative should be willing to do all the points mentioned, and help you and other staff members to understand it, even just the basics, so eventually all your efforts could be in-house.

Social media strategy mapping

Provided by marketing consultants, this service often starts with a social media audit.

As part of the audit, you’ll be asked a set of questions about your goals for social media marketing and about your target customers. You can then expect to receive a social media marketing plan.

The downside of this service is - social media platforms are constantly updated. Facebook for example, like Google Search, has updated its news feed algorithm 8 times in 7 months this year.

So your current strategy may not be applicable for next year or worse, next month.

That said, you have that map to serve as your guide but you should also know how to adjust your plan to fit changes which are out of your control.

Done-for-you solutions

If leaving everything in the hands of a social media manager sounds good to you then you could go with this type of service.

Done-for-you solutions often include a social media audit, strategy planning, profile set-up, and daily implementation of the marketing plan.

In short, the social media manager does everything for you with your marketing goals in mind.

Regular communication is vital here because you need to stay aligned with what’s particularly working for your business and the tests being done, if there are any.

At the same time, you need to keep the manager informed of what’s happening with your company which could be shared on social media to give a good mix of original content, company news, and curated content to your followers.

Conclusion

These services could help you jumpstart or maintain a working strategy and even create a repeatable marketing system.

They’re also a practical investment because successful marketing via social media doesn’t happen overnight. Just like SEO, content marketing, and blogging it calls for time and commitment.

But pick just one and work with it for 3 months at least. Don’t try to engage in them all at once to avoid overwhelm.

This way, you can better gauge if you need to make a U-turn and choose another service, or keep on moving with what you already have.