Twittered Out? Try Outsourcing Your Social Media Marketing

How’s it going on Twitter now that your company has surpassed the thousand-follower mark?  Overwhelmed?  You are not alone.

First step: According to popular blog Zen Habits, you should always remember to breathe.

Second step: It’s time to hand over the social-media wheel.

Applications like Tweet Deck can help you better manage the load.  However, the endless monitoring, posting, and one-on-one engagement with your followers can still drive you and your marketing team to the twitter end.  A common reaction to social-media overload is simply to give up.

Same goes for Facebook, Flickr, Digg, blogs, forums, and the expanding pool of socia-media platforms on the Web. Uploading images, writing content, creating and managing promotions–managing social media increasingly hogs time and resources of companies everywhere.  That’s because connecting with your customers through social media provides tremendous insight and opportunities for your business.

But when social media starts stealing your attention away from your core business activities, it could be time for your company to outsource.

You’ve probably read or at least heard of Timothy Ferriss’ “4-Hour Workweek.”   His concept of outsourcing one’s entire life and working a mere handful of hours per week might strike you as wholly un-American or as unrealistic and corny as a 7-minute-ab exercise program.  But it’s hard to argue the validity of outsourcing to a social-media expert or firm when it can save your company both time and money.

In addition to helping with the heavy lifting on your existing marketing program, social-media experts can recommend new ideas on how social media can best help your company reach out to customers and build your brand.  A social-media expert or firm can also track results and evaluate your social-media program’s ROI.

And once you’ve outsourced social media, you can go back to to concentrating on other critical business matters including, of course, Zenful breathing.