PROS AND CONS OF MANAGING SOCIA MEDIA IN-HOUSE

22 July 2022

Should you manage your own social media or should you outsource it? The answer to this question is… it depends. The decision ultimately comes down to the resources you want to expend.  Would you rather spend time running your own accounts and building your social media knowledge, or would you prefer to invest in accessing external expertise by outsourcing your social media to an agency? It may be tempting to ignore this dilemma completely, but the benefits of effective social media management are very much worth the effort! 

Have a read through our pros and cons of managing social media in-house to get a feel for which choice is right for your business:

Pros

Keeping Costs Down

Keeping your social media in-house will avoid spending precious budget on hiring an agency. Agencies tend to charge clients with a monthly retainer, ranging in price depending on your business’s needs. This may sound like a good deal as you can work your budget around this; however, often you’ll have to pay an upfront cost to set up the strategy as this can be a lengthy process for agencies. Depending upon your budget, it may be worth considering managing your social media in-house rather than outsourcing.

Control

You are the expert in your own business: you understand the ins and outs of the operations; your target audience; your industry and how you want your brand to look. With this knowledge, it should be easy for you to translate this into your social media content, and your communication with consumers online. 

If you were to use an external agency, they would need to spend time learning these aspects of your business to know what they should be posting to your target audience. Despite this, with time, the agency would quickly become familiar with your brand and how best to portray it on social media.

Communication

Social media channels are often used for two-way communication between businesses and customers. On social media, questions can be sent directly to the business through messages or comments. Due to the fast-paced nature of social media, often, customers expect an immediate response to their comments and messages. 

When social media channels are internally managed, this would most likely often result in the business responding quickly and efficiently, providing the correct information that consumers need. However, when social media channels are externally managed, this could result in a longer wait time for customers and a process would need to be in place between the business and the agency to ensure that the information in the response is correct.

Cons

Commitment

Successfully managing a social media strategy requires a lot of commitment. Unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as posting on Instagram once a week and calling it a day. Impressive results are only possible through devoted commitment and consistent attention to detail. As social media is always changing, an in-house social media manager must be comfortable with keeping up to date and dealing resiliently with unexpected changes and updates to platforms.  These changes happen all the time and may cause frustration when they are at odds with the in-house social media strategy.  Faced with these hurdles, it may be tempting to give up.  Hiring an agency may therefore provide a more reliable option.

Resources

Developing and implementing a strong social media strategy can take up a lot of time and needs to be properly resourced.  Simply adding this workload onto busy individuals or teams is a recipe for increased pressure and stress and, potentially, decreased quality of work.  Hiring an agency mitigates the risk of demotivating and overloading an in-house team.

Expertise 

External social media agencies are experts in what they do. Their knowledge on forming targeted social media strategies and implementing them effectively is unlikely to be matched by internal resources, particularly when there are competing priorities within busy teams.  

We know you will want to get your business’s social media rolling and start to reap the benefits an effective social media strategy can deliver.  This article has set out some of the important considerations in deciding whether to stay in-house or to go external. If you’re in need of some more tailored advice, please get in touch here and we can help you come to the right decision to kick-start your social media journey today.