One of the things that we often hear is that social media marketing is free.  While it is true that most social media networking sites have no cost to participate, there is the cost of executing.

One of the key components of a good social media strategy is to develop a plan that will keep you or your firm participating regularly.  In order to do this, you must decide if you will be the person to manage this or if you plan on outsourcing this task, or if you want a combination of both.

Here are some examples of different roles that are often outsourced:

• Research Specialist: This person offers ongoing research services to help you identify where your target market is online, which is constantly evolving.  He or she suggests new networks to target, finds new networks in which to participate, lists of friends to invite, etc.

• Company Representative: If you don’t feel you have the time to carry out all aspects of your strategy on your own, you can hire someone to act as a representative of your practice on your behalf.  This person would participate in discussions on behalf of your company online, post relevant and informative articles out to your audience, etc.

• Online Reputation Manager: This person is responsible for tracking and monitoring your online reputation, which is a handful in and of itself!  He or she would use tracking tools to find every post and site where your name or firm is mentioned, and would respond to any negative comments, trying to minimize negative exposure online.

• Blog Manager: The blog is the heart of your social media strategy. It is important to make sure that your blog is continually maintained and upgraded when appropriate.  There’s quite a bit more to running a successful blog than simply writing a post.  A Blog Manager will make sure that your blog stays current by adding the most up-to-date plug-ins and keeping the posting schedule consistent.

There is a cost to outsourcing, but this must be compared with the cost of your time.  If you have a team in place effectively taking care of parts of your social media strategy, you are free to concentrate on the aspects of the strategy where your personal voice really needs to get through and connect with your audience – writing articles and blog posts, for example.

If you decide that you would like to spend your valuable time on the parts of social media marketing that will allow you to put a voice to your message and delegate the rest we’d love to help you discover how easily this can be done.