Skip to main content

How a Social Media Consultant Can Help Your New Marketing Strategy

Interest in social media marketing is surging, with several recent studies showing that a majority of companies, of all sizes, are now using social media in some form for business purposes. I've also seen dramatically increased interest in hiring social media consultants. But if most companies are already using social media in their marketing/PR mix, why is a consultant necessary? After all, isn't social media primarily about conversations? And aren't those conversations best engaged in by internal subject matter experts? And aren't the tools pretty easy to use?

While the answer to each of those last three questions is "yes," a knowledgeable outside adviser can nevertheless provide significant value, helping companies maximize the value of social media efforts while minimizing costs. If you're inside an organization on the hiring side, here's how a social media consultant can help your firm. If you're a consultant, here's what you have in your bag to sell.

According to MarketingSherpa's 2009 Social Media & PR Benchmark Guide (PDF), while 76% of marketing and PR professionals "agree" or "strongly agree" that social media marketing is changing the way their organizations communicate, the two most significant barriers cited to social media adoption were "lack of knowledgeable staff" and "inability to measure ROI." These are among the key benefits a consultant can provide:
  • Focus on using the right tools and prioritize efforts (i.e., don't talk in places where no one is listening);
  • Avoid false starts and do things right the first time (e.g., someone who's never set up a blog before is guaranteed to make mistakes, probably several; consultants aren't perfect, but can be expected to make far fewer);
  • Utilize proper tactics and etiquette for each type of media; and
  • Measure results to help optimize efforts.
More specifically, these are some of the services a social media consultant can offer:
  • Research—determine which venues are most important for a specific industry and company, and map out the key influencers in that space.
  • Strategy—help identify how social media fits with existing activities such as SEO, PR and event marketing.
  • Tactics—develop plans for media to be used, content needed, assign responsibilities, and core messaging/values to incorporate (e.g., Wal-Mart and Apple have very different corporate personalities; their social media activities should reflect that).
  • Setup—while social media and networking tools are designed to be easy enough for almost anyone to use, having a social media consultant create new profiles, and review existing ones, can help assure a consistent, professional presentation across various sites.
  • Monitoring—set up a monitoring system to track conversations about your company, competitors and key industry topics across social media sites, and the results of your social media marketing efforts, using either free tools or professional applications such as Radian6, Techrigy or TruCast.
  • Content production—content in the form of blog posts, white papers, reports, video, presentations, podcasts and images is a major component of social media marketing. A social media consultant may in many instances be able to supplement your internal resources to produce link-worthy material.
  • Content promotion—from social networking and social bookmarking to Twitter and blogs, social media tools offer myriad ways to promote your content. An experienced social media consultant can help you more fully exploit these opportunities.
  • Prioritization—participation in social media is time-consuming; you can't be everywhere and jump into every conversation. Through monitoring, mapping the key influencers in your space and an understanding of the social media landscape, a social media consultant can help you prioritize your efforts for maximum effect.
  • Outreach—social media offers powerful ways to communicate your messages to key influencers in your industry, who then spread that message and lend credibility to it. But outreach has to be done properly—it isn't just traditional PR using different tools—or it will fall flat (or worse, damage your reputation). A skilled social media consultant knows how to use various tools to maximize the effectiveness of outreach.
  • Updates—finally, the social media landscape is extremely dynamic. Some of the sites and tools viewed as highly promising just a couple of years ago have virtually disappeared, while others (e.g., Twitter) have come out of nowhere to rapidly gain large followings. Because they live and breathe social media on a daily basis, often for clients in a variety of industries, social media consultants are well-positioned to stay current on the latest trends and tools and apply this knowledge to help keep your social media efforts on track, productive and relevant.
In short, while any company can incorporate social media into its marketing and PR practices without any outside help, a knowledgeable social media consultant can help make those efforts more effective and efficient, while avoiding missteps and false starts. The ongoing, day-to-day effort will fall on your internal marketing and PR staff, executives and subject-matter experts (who can be just about anyone in your company), but a good consultant can assist in getting these efforts off to a productive start and help keep them on track.

*****


Contact Mike Bannan: mike@digitalrdm.com

Comments

Albert Maruggi said…
Good post, but I'd say two things

1)While I certainly can use the work, consultants don't have all the answers, ask Walmart, Motrin, - the social web is about reacting to the random so no hard and fast rules. Consultants do have plenty of experience, and the ones that realize true social media needs to be absorbed by companies to truly be successful.

2) and this speaks to point 1, I believe the missing component from most social media consulting is culture change management. If the the same corporate silos of information remain in tact, if company executives don't understand the transparency that is being demanded by the market, then social media will be the direct mail of the 21st century, just a bit cheaper and oh yeah greener.

see you tomorrow for a Marketing Edge podcast.
Tom Pick said…
Thanks Albert. Another service a social media consultant can provide: helping clients understand how their internal practices will have to change in order to benefit from social media.

I hope my post made clear that social media marketing, ultimately, can't be "done" by any one from the outside; a consultant can help get the ball rolling and put monitoring tools in place, but ultimately subject matter experts within the client organization have to take over the day-to-day participation in online conversations.

Without change, there's no hope. :-)

All Time Greats

7 Reasons Every Business Needs to Twitter

This post has been moved to 7 Reasons Every Business Needs to be on Twitter on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: Twitter Dell Zappos customer service influence-the-influencers market intelligence Tony Hsieh b2b Twitter del.icio.us tags: Twitter Dell Zappos customer service influence-the-influencers market intelligence Tony Hsieh b2b Twitter icerocket tags: Twitter Dell Zappos customer service influence-the-influencers market intelligence Tony Hsieh b2b Twitter Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Top Notch Digital Marketing Tip: Google AdWords and PPC

MARKETING: 101 Looking for some online marketing strategy or social media tips to grow your business? Well, you’ve come to the right digital marketing resource! Web Market Central has been doling out the proper digital marketing advice for years. And as you already know, marketing to customers online is 100 times easier than using dated, expensive and traditional marketing tactics. Like seriously, who uses billboards in 2019? But you already know how effective digital marketing can be in the modern age. So now that you're totally convinced of what you already knew, let’s give you today's top-notch digital marketing tip! The Pure Unfettered Power of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and PPC Campaigns Just like optimizing your site to rank for keywords, you can use our online marketing tips to pay to run advertisements on Google so that your business is shown on the first page of search engine results. Ranking this way is instantaneous whereas SEO (Search Engine Optimizati

How to Use SEO: Leverage SEO To Be Found Online and Boost Your Online Marketing

All businesses that want to attract customers online, no matter the business size or age, have few options other than Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO In The Box™ by Results Driven Marketing®, LLC There are roughly 1.8 billion websites online, and basic SEO allows Google to find and index or catalog your webpages.  After that, Google serves you up to searchers in the organic section.  The question remains: where they list your site, on page one or page 22 or further back? SEO controls your positioning. Do you want to be found online or not? If your business is online or you want your product or service to be found online, then Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a must, and knowing how to use SEO to leverage the power of the internet is vital. Arguably, an effective SEO strategy gets you on the organic results section of the search engine results pages (SERP). Organic traffic is highly valuable and requires high-quality SEO. But even businesses that use l

Getting More Out of Each Click with "Post-Click Marketing"

With the economy now officially in a recession (as if we didn't know that), marketers are under increasing pressure to do more with less. On the interactive marketing side, few marketers will get budget increases enabling them to drive more clicks. The challenge, then, is to maximize marketing productivity—to get more leads out of the same number of clicks. This is the first of two posts that will look at how to improve conversion rates to get more value from each click. One answer to this challenge is provided by "post-click marketing," a.k.a. lead automation management vendors. While the specifics of each service vary, all of them essentially: automate the process of extracting visitor IP information from your log files; match the IP address to an organization; filter out ISPs; and map the company name to one or more external databases to provide additional information (company size, industry, key contacts etc.). The better services also use geo-location filte

Top Notch Digital Marketing Tip: Optimize Your Site

Looking for some online marketing tips to grow your business? Well, you’ve come to the right digital marketing resource! Web Market Central has been doling out the proper digital marketing advice for years. And as you already know, marketing to customers online is 100 times easier than using dated, expensive and traditional marketing tactics. Like seriously, who uses billboards in 2019? But you already know how effective digital marketing and an seo strategy can be in the modern age. So now that you're totally convinced of what you already knew, let’s give you today's top-notch digital marketing tip! Optimize Your Site to Improve Search Engine Rankings Most small business owners know that their websites need to be optimized in order for search engines, like Google and Bing, to find them and rank them on the search engine results page. If you don’t know, that’s okay. You can learn all about Search Engine Optimization and SEO best practices here to help impr

Top-Notch Digital Marketing Tip: Advertisements That Make Sense

MARKETING: 101 Looking for some online marketing tips to grow your business? Well, you’ve come to the right digital marketing resource ! Web Market Central has been doling out the proper DM advice for years. And as you already know, marketing to customers online is 100 times easier than using dated, expensive and traditional marketing tactics. Like seriously, who uses billboards in 2019? But you already know how effective Digital Marketing can be in the modern age. So now that you're totally convinced of what you already knew, let’s give you today's top notch-digital marketing tip! Advertisement Congruence If your business is running ads this is one of our most important online marketing tips! Ad congruence is when your ads and landing pages look alike or have the same message. Have you ever clicked on an ad and been taken to a page that looked nothing like the ad? When your ads look like the web pages they lead to, customers will feel like they are in

Best of 2008: Social Media Optimization, Part 2

This content has been moved to Best of 2008: Social Media Marketing on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: best free tools for monitoring social buzz social media marketing Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel Techrigy SM2 Key Web Data Chris Lang Google social bookmarking HubSpot Catie Foertsch Kate Morris TopRank Online Marketing Blog Jessica Cameron-Ruud Duct Tape Marketing John Jantsch CircleUp Traffic Travis del.icio.us tags: best free tools for monitoring social buzz social media marketing Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel Techrigy SM2 Key Web Data Chris Lang Google social bookmarking HubSpot Catie Foertsch Kate Morris TopRank Online Marketing Blog Jessica Cameron-Ruud Duct Tape Marketing John Jantsch CircleUp Traffic Travis icerocket tags: best free tools for monitoring social buzz social media marketing Six Pixels of Separation Mitch Joel Techrigy SM2 Key Web Data Chris Lang Google social bookmarking HubSpot Catie Foe

Book Review: Website Optimization

This post has been moved to Book Review: Website Optimization – Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets on the Webbiquity blog. ***** technorati tags: Andrew B. King, Web Site Opimization LLC, Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets, book review, Wordtracker, SEO insights, social networking, Marketleap.com link popularity tool del.icio.us tags: Andrew B. King, Web Site Opimization LLC, Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets, book review, Wordtracker, SEO insights, social networking, Marketleap.com link popularity tool icerocket tags: Andrew B. King, Web Site Opimization LLC, Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets, book review, Wordtracker, SEO insights, social networking, Marketleap.com link popularity tool Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom