Hiring A B2B Specialist To Manage Your Social Media Marketing
Updated: Feb 8, 2021
Running a B2B brand is hard enough, let alone mastering social media. This is where hiring a B2B social media specialist comes in, to lessen your workload, focus on other aspects of your business you want to manage, and create powerful strategies that generate results.
This isn’t a role you can just pass off to the intern. A qualified social media manager or agency can provide immediate value and launch campaigns that will drive B2B marketing results.
But how do we find the perfect candidate? Competent social media specialists are hard to come by. On top of that, they need to correspond perfectly to a brand’s current needs, budgets, and goals.
Should I Hire a Social Media Agency Or Social Media Manager?
One dilemma that many B2B teams experience is the balance between internal and external resources. While both options have their benefits, one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to managing social for your brand.
To help you in your choice, we’ve highlighted both possible options, their pros and cons, and what to look for when hiring either of these.
1) Hiring A Social Media Agency
If you know exactly what success looks like and you’re trying to conserve internal resources, then hiring a social media agency is the way to go. Having the budget to hire a quality social media management firm that gets your brand voice and goals is well worth it, considering the time it will buy you.
Keep in mind: You don’t need to outsource all of your social media marketing program.
Pros of Outsourcing Social Media Marketing:
Quality and consistency of social data reporting and analytics — thanks to efficiencies across clients.
There will be less trial and error: an agency will bring experience and lessons from working with many clients to the table, which in return will accelerate your social media results.
Social media agencies have access to advanced tools that can have an important effect when it comes to growing your audience.
You will be working with a variety of social media experts, from analysts to creatives, who individually will be able to bring their unique skills to each platform.
Potential Cons of Outsourcing Social Media Marketing:
Hiring a social media agency can be expensive for early-stage entrepreneurs and businesses who have smaller budgets for testing and limited time for communication.
Since agencies set scopes of work for everything they do, they may not handle all of the ancillary and administrative tasks an in-house social media manager would do.
They have their own process. Most social media agencies will begin by auditing your past performance and analysing your audience. This phase could last 1 week to 1 month.
What To Look For In A B2B Social Media Agency
B2B Proof / Results: When searching for a social media partner, ask them for B2B case studies and/or links to social media campaigns they are managing right now for B2B clients. While most large clients have strict confidential agreements, the existence of the engagement itself is usually fair game.
Client references: In some instances, they will supply names and contact info of clients that will answer your questions. You can also scan Facebook, Clutch.co, G2, or Google to see what previous clients have shared. Keep in mind, agency reviews will primarily showcase the super positive or negative experiences. (Just being honest here.)
Consume their content: Can you get a sense of their personality and people from their social? Is their blog content genuinely useful? Conduct a surface level audit to judge their first impression.
Audience & industry experience: An agency that has worked in your niche or marketed to your audience may be able to generate results faster.
Pricing structure: Do you want to pick from a pre-set menu or customise your approach from scratch?
Communication cadence: Communication plays an essential role in any healthy partnership. Consider your communication preferences and the options they provide. Will they send you weekly status updates? Review monthly reports? Will they setup a shared Slack channel?
I focus on building social media marketing programs that help B2B businesses grow their audience and revenue. That means prioritising the right channels and mapping content opportunities across your buyer’s journey.
Please do reach out and see how I can help you.