You know in the last few years social media has become apart of our daily lives. It’s on 24/7 and impossible to avoid in the digital space. There isn’t a marketing manager today that isn’t losing sleep over how much money or time they need to spend to take advantage of social media’s endless possibilities.

But what about the little guy? You’ve got a business to run. In fact you are the business and you can’t afford to get stuck at your desk fretting over how or what to post in your social media feeds.

This dilemma would come up quite often with my former web design clients after we launched their new site. They would be thrilled with the results and ready to drum-up some new business from their site but now they’ve got to deal with traffic, Facebook ads, review sites and social media.

This is when I would set-up a call, as their web designer, to discuss what their options were. When it comes to managing your social media you basically have two. You can either do-it-yourself OR if you don’t have time, you can hire someone to do it.

If you want to hire someone without having to go through too much trouble I would recommend an on-demand social media marketing service. Yep – outsource it.

Now I know “outsourcing” isn’t as popular as it was a few years back but there are a lot more viable and affordable options out there today. Here are 3 reasons why a social media marketing service may be the best option for your small business.

It Eliminates the Need to Hire a Marketing Manager or Team

Between the health insurance, payroll and taxes – a new employee can be costly. Most business owners rarely even know what to look for in a Marketing or Social Media Manager. If you hire an agency and someone quits at your agency’s service, they can move your account over to someone else who’s working in the same space.

If your employee quits you will have to stop what you’re doing and start the search for a new manager all over again and that will take way more time and money. Services like GoDaddy Social and Storytellit are good places to start.

There’s Nothing Wrong with Asking for Help

Let’s face it. Sure you could invest in a course or two and learn how to do this on your own, but I would ask you to think about HOW long would it take for you to transverse that learning curve. Ask yourself if it’s really worth your time when you could be doing something you’re REALLY good at like providing your product or service to your customers instead?

What I see more often than not is that the business owner doesn’t really know what to say or post – so they choose to say nothing at all. This is bad for business because they basically stop marketing and that simply isn’t an option today. If you stop marketing your business, you’ll most certainly drown in the sea of noise coming from your competition.

I’ve made this mistake myself – for years I thought I could save money on filing my taxes by doing them myself and every year I had to pay taxes. Now I could have taking some accounting or tax courses, but I have no desire to be an accountant.

So instead of putting-off filing my taxes for another 3 days – I finally “found the money” about 3 years into my business and paid an accountant. I got a $1200 refund that year and it only took 2 hours. I not only saved a huge amount of time and frustration but I actually came out with more money for my business.

This is what it means to run a business and not just work hours for dollars. Sometimes you have to be humble enough to delegate certain parts of your business to someone else – because you just aren’t good at it. It’s their calling and not yours and there’s nothing wrong with asking for help.

You Can’t Just Set It & Forget It

Now if you’re really strapped for cash you don’t have to make a heavy financial commitment up front. You can start slow – but start. I personally advise my clients to “dip their toe” in the water on things that they don’t feel comfortable with.

Services like Growth Geeks and People Per Hour are a good place to start. They allow you to order your social media services a la carte and for very affordable prices. Just keep in mind thought that the less money you spend the more involved you’ll have to be.

You’ll need to keep track of who is working on what social media platform or campaign. You can’t just “set it and forget it”.

Bonus Tip! Go with Someone Who Specializes in Your Niche

Don’t forget to ask for referrals from other small independent local businesses who offer the same services. Those businesses may likely cost more but I would recommend you take a look at them. If you do decide to “go local” only work with those businesses or services that specialize in your niche.

You don’t want to pay more money for generic content that you could get anywhere.

The larger automated marketing services, tend to serve specific niches as well, so be sure to check out which markets they serve on their site or ask. In either case ask them for referrals or to email you links to active client accounts so you can see the quality of their work for yourself.

You want to look for how often they post, how they handle reviews (both good and bad) and if the customers from those businesses are posting and commenting on their platforms on a regular basis.

I hope this post helped ease your concerns about managing your social media accounts. Remember this isn’t something that you have to jump into blindly.

Take the time to do your homework and educate yourself. The whole point is to take care of your business and get back to doing what you enjoy and do best.

OK that’s it for me this week. Now I’d like to hear from you.

Question: Do you have a hard time figuring out what to keep “in-house” versus outsourcing the job to someone else? If so, what parts of your business do you find the most difficult to manage? Share your comments and concerns below.

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This post was updated on December 15, 2021.