If you’ve been handed the responsibility of social media in the office but you’re just too busy to make a success of it, then you should ask your boss whether you can outsource.
There are so many reasons why you should consider doing so – it’ll save you time, money, and free up your energy to focus on more important business tasks – but your boss may need some nudging in the right direction before they sign off and let you hand over the reins.
To give you a helping hand, we’ve put together five of the simplest and most effective ways to show your boss or manager why outsourcing social media management makes sense.
Show them your analytics
One of the first things that you should do is open your analytics on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and show your boss that your social media accounts need work.
All the major social networks offer free analytics and reporting tools so you can monitor engagement, impressions, and followers – make sure you’ve turned on the settings as soon as you can.
If your analytics are showing lots of red or negatives, then take them to your boss and let them know.
If they can see that engagement has been dropping or your follower count hasn’t grown in years, they might come round to the idea of paying for a social media manager.
Analytics are a great way of showing your boss what you’re doing on social media, and whether or not you’re getting any return on your time.
Explain that you’re too busy
Let’s face it: social media management takes time.
Whether you’re crawling the internet for blog posts, creating custom graphics or responding to customers on Messenger, having the responsibility of a company’s social media presence can eat into your time and leave you behind on more important business tasks.
This is even truer if social media isn’t your forte – if you’re a receptionist, sales executive or manager, you shouldn’t be managing social media.
Work out how much time you’re spending on managing social media right now, and tell your boss what you could be doing with that time.
If you’re spending five hours a week, that’s five hours of productivity your company is missing out on. The numbers speak for themselves.
Discuss the benefits of social media
A lot of the time, senior executives and bosses simply don’t understand the power of the importance of social media.
The might have a rough idea of what you’re supposed to do to get engagement and drive traffic, but if they’ve never taken on the task of posting content and engaging with customers, they won’t understand the benefits of an effective strategy.
Go to your boss with a list of social media benefits and align them with your company goals and objectives.
The chances are that you’re missing out on additional revenue because you are not utilising social to the best of its ability – something your boss will want to change.
Some of the most obvious benefits of social media for small businesses include:
- More traffic to your website
- Increased brand awareness
- Humanises your brand
- Establishes your business as an authority in your niche
- Helps you to generate leads
- Allows you to promote content
- Helps to manage your reputation
- Boosts customer engagement
- Helps you to spy on the competition
- Expands your audience and potential
If your boss still doesn’t want to pay for social media management to boost their digital presence after you read through that list of benefits, then they’re missing out!
Ask for case studies and testimonials
Once you’ve found a social media management company to take control of your accounts, ask them to share some case studies and testimonials from satisfied clients, which you can show to your boss.
If a company in your niche has worked with a company and achieved a 50% increase in lead generation, your boss should want to follow their lead.
You should be able to find lots of case studies and testimonials out there on the internet; bring a few to your boss and show them what they’re missing out on.
They’ll soon see that they can expect a return on their investment once they get started with social media.
Choose a low-cost social media management company
Finally, consider working with a low-cost social media management company to take control of your Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Your boss will naturally want to save money everywhere they can, and perhaps that’s the reason why they chose you to run their accounts in the first place.
However, once they realise that they can pay as little as £99 per month for social media management, they’ll soon realise that outsourcing is the best option.
Indeed, if you’re spending 5 hours a week running social media at present, that’s 20 hours a month you’ll get back to work on more important business tasks – music to your boss’ ears!
A good leader will know how to utilise staff to the best of their ability, and the chances are social media isn’t where you should be investing your time and energy.