Do your social media channels take all your time and prevent you from doing what matters most? If this is you, don’t worry. You’re not the only small business owner who has struggled with building a strong social media platform. Maybe it’s time for you to do what some are too afraid to do and outsource your social media. 

Outsourcing your social media is a great way to alieve your stress and struggle by hiring someone to manage and write your social media channels. Delegating your platforms saves you time, gives you the freedom to work on high-priority tasks, and makes it easier to turn followers into dollars. 

Before you begin searching for social media agencies, there is more to outsourcing than finding a millennial or recent college graduate who knows how to navigate Facebook and Instagram. When you use social media for business, there must be a strategy. Otherwise, the lucrative relationships between you and clients, the growth of your business, and the sharing of your services and products will not happen.

If you want to create a social media capable of building your business, there are a few tips to know before hiring someone.

1. Know Your Goals Before Outsourcing

How can you expect a social media agency to know what to do for you if you aren’t sure what you want? Are you looking to increase your followers from 500 to 1000 within a certain amount of time? Do you want to see more engagement (likes, comments, and shares) on your posts? Or do you need help promoting your services and products to potential and current clients?

It’s vital to know your social media goals because it gives those your outsourcing to a plan to follow. Having specific goals will also help you know if the agency or individual you’re delegating to is the best fit for you in the future.

2. Review What the Social Media Agencies Will Do For You

Many social media agencies are looking to help small businesses create strong social media platforms, but not all are perfect for you. The best way to figure out if you should work with a particular agency is to find out what they will do for you. There are several essential questions to keep in mind when deciding who to hire.

• How will they write your posts? Will they be based on your platforms’ analytics and framework, or will they write based on what feels or sounds good?

• Will they do hashtag research? If not, you must keep in mind that hashtags bring your post to specific people interested in what your business has to offer.

• How many posts will they write for each platform? And how many platforms do they include? Again, if you know your social media goals, it’ll be easier to determine if their services are perfect for your social media platforms.

3. Research Your Options for the Best Fit

No one knows what your business and social media platforms need more than you. The easiest way to narrow your search is to pair what you need with the agency that offers you a solution to the problem. 

Let’s say you know your monthly budget for hiring a social media agency and want to receive thirty posts for every four social media platforms. You no longer have to search for any and every social media agency known to man. Now, you can spend your time looking for an agency that meets your needs and fits your budget.

4. Check Out Their Work for Previous and Current Clients

Finding the right social media agency requires a process of elimination. If you’ve narrowed your options to a handful of agencies, a simple and easy way to choose is checking out their previous and current clients. Looking into the agency’s client history will give you a peek into what it’s like to work with them, how they work with others, and the results they’ve been known to provide.

Leamon Crooms, CEO and Founder of Strategic Growth Advisors, suggests one of the best ways to select a social media agency is getting references. He says, ‘If the candidate is experienced, they should be able to provide you either with the contact information of another client or a letter of recommendation.’

If one agency’s recommendations or experience doesn’t align with your goals or expectations, you can move on to the next.

5. Understand Their Process and See if it Works for You

You think you’ve found the perfect social media agency. Great, but now isn’t the time to sit back and relax. It’s time for more questions.

If you fail to ask about their creation and review process, you will place yourself in a complicated position along the road. Knowing how many posts they create at once will help you understand their workflow and what you can expect to receive each month. 

Asking how much they’ll need you to be involved will let you know how much work you and them will need to input. Too much involvement may cause you to feel as if your outsourcing was in vain. Too little involvement may cause you to feel as if your advice and suggestions aren’t recognized.

After asking these questions, you’ll better understand if the social media agency is what you and your business need.

Realistic Expectations Get Realistic Results

The goal of outsourcing your social media platforms to a social media agency is to alleviate the pressures of writing copy, managing content, and building lucrative relationships. Achieving these things take time and don’t happen overnight. 

Outsourcing may be the right move for your business, but expecting immediate success and growth will make it seem like the wrong move. If real-life relationships gradually grow and strengthen, digital relationships require the same. After you’ve used these tips to find a social media agency best for your business, it’s wise to remember patience is a virtue, and success comes with time.