Reconsidering Outsourcing Your Social Media to a Third-Party?

Perhaps you have seen the other blog titled Should You Outsource Your Social Media to A Third Party? – well, consider this the sister to that posting. This update to the prior includes bits of what we have already mentioned in addition to the few benefits there are should you choose to outsource your social media. Everything you do has some pros and cons, however, when exercised under the correct understanding you can do the right thing for your company.

There is no doubt about how powerful of a tool social media can be for your organization. Your desire to have such a powerful tool in your arsenal is there, sure, but your company may find itself lacking the manpower or the budget to make such a dream a reality. There could be a variety of stressors that make it seem as though attaining the strength of social media can only be done if you outsource the division to an external agency. If you have found your way to this page then you have wondered if you should outsource your social media platform to a third party agency.

Before you make a decision, understand that there are a plethora of potential outcomes for the choices you make – think critically, and you will find yourself on the best path. The first step you must take on such a path begins with considering what social media means as a tool to your organization. Are you looking to forge relationships with consumers or are your intentions centered on monitoring online relationships? The latter seems to be predicated on the prior.

Social media, in the most simplistic explanation, allows for a two-way dialogue between an organization and various audiences. This dialogue is not limited to customer service and can be utilized for marketing, advertising, evaluation, and measurement purposes. The public, your audiences, then receive what you have encoded into your products, encode their own meaning into that product or message, and then diffuse that message under a higher velocity via various social media channels. You can see why it is important to build a relationship with your social media tools – something that is far more difficult to accomplish if you outsource your social media. Let’s say, however, that building relationships is not your primary objective behind your social media tool - there are other dimensions to consider of course.  

So you are bringing in the third-party; According to Olivier Blanchard (2011) monitoring keywords is not a bad place to start when it comes to outsourcing (p. 176). “Working with an outside agency that specializes in collecting and measuring predetermined data sets can save an organization time and money” (Blanchard, 2011, p. 176). Oftentimes, an outside agency will be more adept at monitoring fluctuations of online mentions and gathering and measuring consumer insights then an in-house social media manager could. This can make all of the difference when you approach your next campaign. This tactic both frees up your hands to focus on the campaign and allows you to draw in the necessary information to shape your campaign as needed. “At the very least, the monitoring agency can, if it sees a potential problem on the horizon, ring the alarm…and bring it to the attention of the client’s crisis management team” (Blanchard, 2011, p. 176).

Marketing and advertising campaigns are often one of the first components to be outsourced to a third-party due to the fact that a majority of contemporary campaigns are tailored to fit social media. As we began to allude to in the previous paragraph, it is important that the organization handles the overall content creation whilst the third-party deals with the social media aspects. The idea is to have the social media channels managed by the client, while the content associated with the campaign is produced by the organization.

As you can see, there are dimensions, where it would be necessary and sometimes cheaper, that are better handled by a third-party agency. The overall idea is to allow them to worry about the data while you worry about the content creation. Working together tightly here is key, for we all know that every moment in the age of information counts. Now, even if you have decided to outsource your social media to a third-party, it doesn’t mean that your organization will be unable to foster a relationship development with its various publics. Aside from the paid intern method discussed in the sister blog, while the organization outsources it genesis model to a third-party it can concurrently encourage its employees to form a sort of pirate ship model. In this way, the employees of the organization can add an intimate touch while the professionals do the work that otherwise couldn’t be done. 

References

Blanchard, O. (2011). Social media ROI: managing and measuring social media efforts in your organization. Indianapolis: Que Pub.

WillowRidgeMedia. (2014, September 04). How to Outsource Social Media Marketing: Socialmediaonlineclasses.com Bonus Webinar. Retrieved April 26, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQqsF12dKo8

The Dangers of Social Media Advertising on the Adolescent Mind

Social Media is the new you – individuals and organizations alike shape an online identity where they can be whatever they want to be. It’s simple, everyone is creating an online identity. Social media serves as an outlet for our innermost thoughts and feelings, we use it communicate with our friends and family, and we use it to multi-task in this busy world. Everyone puts so much of themselves into their social media accounts. Organizations use it to advertise, market, and strengthen relationships between themselves and their audiences; the people use it to shape their identity. There are a variety of theories that are directly applicable to how the adolescent shapes their identity; with the new mergence of the individual identity with the social media identity, organizations now play a larger role in the shaping of the adolescent mind. Because the adolescent mind is so pliable, there exists a danger in the interaction of organizations (their advertisements and marketing) and adolescents which could lead to a permanent, deep-rooted brand association.

In just the United States alone “social network sites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn) and blogging sites (e.g., Blogger, Twitter, and Tumblr) are the main things people look at when the log on” (Bryant, Thompson, & Finklea, 2013, p. 297). Bryant, Thompson, & Finklea (2013) claim that 53.4 billion minutes a month are spent by each American social media user on their preferred social media site – meaning individuals spend at least 22.9 percent of their time on social media (p. 297). A significant percentage of those users are adolescents – in fact, 81 percent of social media users are adolescents between the ages of thirteen and eighteen (Hindenach, 2013). Of that percentage, 71 percent usemore than one social media account (Lenhart, 2015). Meaning adolescents, who are respectively endeavoring in successfully shaping their identity, are now, partially, being raised under organizational opinion and influence. Shea Bennett (2014) claims that almost nine out of ten companies use social media as a means for marketing. This means that almost ninety percent of existing American organizations use social media to market to social media users, eighty-one percent of whom are adolescents. Additionally, organizations are better able to reach each adolescent due to their concurrent usage of several social media platforms. Eighty-one percent of all adolescent minds are subject to deep-rooted brand association.

Okay, so organizations are not fictional characters - but they know less about you than you have invested in them, in a happening that we label a parasocial interaction. We have established that most organizations are using social media as a means of marketing and that most adolescents spend a majority of their time shaping their identity on social media. The correlation between the two results in a parasocial interaction, where the adolescent social media user will see the organization as more of a friend than a structural entity or even a stranger. A parasocial relationship is a “one-sided relationship, where one person extends emotional energy, interest, [money,] and time, and the other party…is completely unaware of the other’s existence…parasocial relationships are cultivated by the media to resemble face-to-face relationships” (Bennett, Rossmeisl, Turner, Holcombe, Young, Brown, & Key, 2014). If you wanted it to be put simply, you could say that the consumer does everything their advertisements ask and the organization barely knows the consumer exists. If you throw in the idea that the adolescent mind shapes a corporeal identity alongside a social media identity, doing so through a form of social contagion while concurrently relying on social expectations derived from various social constructs, than you conclude that this parasocial interaction leaves a lasting impression on the adolescent identity. There are dangers that stem from this interaction. For example, there is a social construct, further enhanced through media and plastered over various social media sites, of what the human body should look like. Organizations, such as make-up companies, tell their audience members that in order to look pristinely beautiful, or to look like the women in their advertisements, they must buy their product; Fast-food joints advertise moments of happiness that can only come from what they serve at their restaurant. The parasocial interaction, then, is the seemingly friendly organization that claims to exist to aid the adolescent in their endeavor to fit in or be perfect or to find happiness. The social contagion exists when the adolescents view the individuals in the ads produced in within that parasocial interaction as an influence/role model.  

Already, before the inclusion of social media, the adolescent mind has a difficult time shaping their identity. Add in social media and the shaping identity becomes even more complex. However, when an organization establishes a parasocial relationship with the adolescent, the adolescent’s ability to reach a form of self-actualization becomes jeopardized when they are unable to become the reality that their advertisements portrayed. As you can see, there is a big problem within the pro and con line of social media marketing towards adolescents. 

References

Bennett, S. (2014, October 20). 88% of Companies are Using Social Media for Marketing [STUDY]. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from http://www.adweek.com/digital/social-media-companies/

Bryant, J., Thompson, S., & Finklea, B. W. (2013). Fundementals of Media Effects (2nd ed.). Long Grove, II: Waveland Press.

Hindenach, J. (2013, August 29). Adults vs. Teens: The Different Ways We Use Social Media. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-hindenach/adults-vs-teens-the-diffe_b_3838657.html

Lenhart, A. (2015, April 08). Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/

Should You Outsource Your Social Media to A Third Party?

There is no doubt about how powerful of a tool social media can be for your organization. Your desire to have such a powerful tool in your arsenal is there, sure, but your company may find itself lacking the manpower or the budget to make such a dream a reality. There could be a variety of stressors that make it seem as though attaining the strength of social media can only be done if you outsource the division to an external agency. If you have found your way to this page then you have wondered if you should outsource your social media platform to a third party agency.

Do you really want an answer?

No. You shouldn’t.

Deep down, you really know that it isn’t the best idea for your company – Olivier Blanchard, a renowned brand strategist, would agree with your gut feeling. According to Blanchard (2011) social media works best when fully integrated into all of an organization’s business functions and outsourcing effectively works against this integration (p. 174). What this means is that the tighter you knit every aspect of your organization, the better it functions. Social media is the relationship glue that bonds your organization to its various publics. Because everyone within the organization cares more about your goals and campaigns than any third party could ever, any internal practitioner will yield greater results. They know what is going on with your company, they care, their stakes are higher, and internal social media programs build stronger relationships with your external audiences – which is the overall purpose of social media programs.

However, this leads us back around to the manpower and funding dilemma that brought you to this page – outsourcing is just cheaper you’ll say. Believe it or not, it is more affordable to run an in-house social media program than you know. Aside from the fact that running a social media program in-house will yield greater returns on investments than the outsourced options, there is an additional potential secret to running a social media program – interns.

Bear with us here – interns, especially those fresh out of college, are the perfect and affordable minds that you need to kick-start your social media program. Interns are one of the many potential in-house solutions your organization could have. A college student with little-to-no experience will be so grateful to be working for your organization that they will repay the chance you have given them at your company with gratitude based hard work – truly a remarkable form of work. Most college students, especially those with degrees in communications, have prior social media education and experience, are slates that you can fill with the pride of your organization, individuals who can be trained to fill such a role, and are more cost-effective than who you would outsource the labor to. Because you recruited them right out of college, they will take pride in your organization and reflect that as they fill the role of your social media manager. Never underestimate how valuable gratitude is when it repays chance.

Regardless, outsourcing your social media is bad idea. The many costs outweigh the rewards. By outsourcing you’re telling your publics that we do social media because we have to; by keeping social media in-house you’re are communicating we care, we want to dialogue with you, and we are in this for so much more than other companies (Blanchard, 2011, p. 175). 

References

Blanchard, O. (2011). Social media ROI: managing and measuring social media efforts in your organization. Indianapolis: Que Pub.

Social Media Platforms are the Ears of Your Organization

     

       Have you ever wondered what makes spies so successful? We have all watched those shows where they have the cool gadgets that do those neat tricks but in reality a spy owes their success to their ability to listen, "The human head is equipped with two eyes, two ears, two nostrils but only one mouth. This is because gathering information about our surroundings, learning, and taking in the world around us is much more valuable than our ability to speak" (Blanchard, 2011, p. 128). The duty of a spy is to obtain information - they are not purposed to jump super high into the air when there is an explosion - to get the job done. Organizations, and perhaps your organization, often want their audiences to hear them without considering listening. A great organization is a spy first and an agent second. 

     When we say a spy first and an agent second we are implying that each organization needs to put the act of listening above strategy - in fact, listening bequeaths the opportunity for strategy. Oliver Blanchard (2011) claims that organizations are far more successful in their endeavors when they ask 'what should we listen for?' instead of  'what should we say?' (p. 128). Now we wouldn't just blatantly tell you that the silver ears are more powerful than the silver tongue without explaining ourselves - just keep that fact in your mind as we discuss this throughout this article.
      We should start by drawing a correlation between listening and learning. Acquiring information has long been the key to survival. Lucky for you, we live in the age of information and all your organization needs to do to survive, to put it simply, is "start with general searches about your company and see where they take you...you may find a treasure trove of fan sites or hate sites" (Blanchard, 2011, p. 129). Suddenly you will be bombarded by information and if you listen and really hear what the public has to say then the cogs in your head will immediately start to turn. You will manage this information in such a way that will turn what you hear into what you do. If you do not see much regarding your organization then you know what to do - reposition your organization and establish a presence. 

      This is the opportunity that social media presents an organization. It presents the contemporary organization with a way to glean information from its publics and turn that information into strategy. "Already just by listening an organization can see the genesis of a six-month strategy begin to form" (Blanchard, 2011, p. 129). The days where it was okay to use the statement 'I don't know' are long gone - replaced with the phrase 'let's find out'. Shut down the mouth for a little while, allow you ears the opportunity to provide, and give ears to your organization - be a spy. Be that silent guardian - be Batman.

References

Blanchard, O. (2011). Social media ROI: managing and measuring social media efforts in your organization. Indianapolis: Que Pub.

Personal, Professional, and Personnel: Social Media Guidelines for Harmonious Living

The idiom ‘keep your personal and professional life separate’ is easier said than done. The longer you continue to work for an organization, the more and more you are that company outside of the workplace – a sort of human embodiment of the organization. When you work for an organization the lines between employee and organization begin to blur. Over time you will begin to share an identity with your organization and continue to represent them long after that clock bites the card. Additionally, the more you work for any organization, the more that organization begins to look like you. In fact, companies are not only places that people work for but they are also responsible for the creation of their employee’s identities. In short, communication constitutes human identity leading us to question if social media, because of such a symbiotic relationship between employer and employee, can even be separated into personal and professional when an individual becomes personnel.

Many organizations have external social media usage guidelines in their employee handbook that pertain to the idea that the lines can be easily blurred between employee’s official role for the company and their personal selves. “For better or for worse, employees with official social media roles within…organizations need to be aware that in the eyes of the public they represent their employer around the clock 24/7/365” (Blanchard, 2011, p. 87). Because the identities of the organization and the individual employee are so tightly knit it becomes harder, if not seemingly impossible, to separate personal from personnel. This means that there is a threat to the organization’s reputation if you fail to act professionally; this means that the organization could harm your identity (think: ex-employees of Enron). While this identity crisis seemingly seems to become more and more inseparable, we promise you there are ways to protect both the organization’s and your own identity from harm.

As we have mentioned, there are a couple of things you can do to protect the organization’s identity as well as your own. First, act professional even when you are not inside the workplace. By acting professional in your personal life as well as your professional one, you are taking preventative measures in avoiding any sort of reputational damage to the organization. As an added bonus, you are enhancing your own reputation and enhancing your unconscious competence as a professional. This advice carries over to social media as well. When operating your personal social media account, act professional, almost as if you are using the company’s professional accounts. Since we are in the waters of social media, when posting anything on social media, personal and professional, clarify the difference in some way between company opinions and personal opinions. This will help in distancing your identities from one another. In addition to those big ones, remember to switch social media accounts when exiting and entering the workplace. If you hold a role in social media management for an organization, become that role when the clock bites the card. When you’re at home, use your own – but be professional on both.

It is difficult, we are all subject to some form of corporate colonization as we journey through our professional lives. In as much, the culture of an organization is just a subject to influence from the multiple communication born cultures within. It is important to realize how blurry the lines become and we must be sensitive to this mergence by remaining professional in all that we do.    

References

Blanchard, O. (2011). Social media ROI: managing and measuring social media efforts in your organization. Indianapolis: Que Pub.

So You Want to Work In Social Media?

Hiring for a social media role isn’t easy – procuring a job from the other end is just as difficult. However, understanding that the hiring manager is under the same amount of stress as you are in finding a job is the key to getting your foot in the door. You have to show them that hiring you – even as an intern – is worthwhile - worthwhile to the hiring manager, worthwhile to the entire organization.  Understand that they are held responsible for your performance should they hire you; you may want to show them that you are indeed a happy, incredible person, but they have superiors that they wish to dazzle as well.

If you have read this far then you still feel that you have the skills to be a social media manager. Well, I am sorry to disappoint but there is no such thing as a generic social media role (Blanchard, 2011, p. 72). That would be the equivalent of saying that you are a professional answering machine or email reader. Social Media is a medium – a tool used to carry out an objective. In addition to being fluent in multiple forms of social media, your resume, and subsequently your skillset, has to have a little more oomph behind it. Since you have to care about what the recruiter wants – to impress his superiors or to fill the role perfectly for the sake of the organization - then you should subsequently care what his superiors are looking for.

Management teams care about sales, revenue, costs, and impact – which means that as a social media manager (or whatever role you fill that reflects that title in some way) you will need to utilize your social media accounts as a method of communication to increase the frequency, reach, and yield of the companies objectives. The way you accomplish this depends on whether you are searching for a strategical role or a tactical role – meaning your skills have to reflect the abilities required to fill this role. To make it even simpler: even though you possess the know-how of social media, you have to have other skills that would back up that know how in such a way that would make your communicational endeavors useful. Any idiot can post a tweet or write a blog, you want to be the one who can post it in such a way that can make a positive impact on receiving audiences in a such a way that generates an increase in the frequency in which the public buy from to organization you work for or wish to work for, increases the ability to reach new customers through word-of-mouth, and getting existing customers to spend more with you every time they buy something.

We have already mentioned what all of this means: managing social media is more than type and post, or write a blog and post it – it is about how you communicate with your audiences in a way that mutually benefits the consumer and the organization. Your ability to do that backs up your ability to use social media and makes you a more likely candidate of hire. Your resume, then, has to reflect your ability to do the prior while mentioning you have skills in social media in passing. So to be a successful candidate you need to prove to the hiring manager that you have skills in research and management, that you have the mental capacity for strategic, critical, and tactical thinking, that you have participated in multiple projects on behalf of an organization – preferably taking on a leadership role at some point, and, amongst a plethora of others, the ability to manage a budget. Each one of these that you can meet will increase your chances of being hired as a social media manager.

           One more thing: on your resume, cover letter, or wherever you can, you are going to want to include the active social media accounts you have had. Show them that you are on social media without saying “Hey! I can use social media”. Just as putting your phone number down on a resume shows, in some capacity, that you are able to use a phone, putting down ways to access your social media accounts shows your recruiter that you can use, and have been using various social media accounts. Word of caution, though, according to Blanchard (2011), if you are going to perform the aforementioned, you should hope that you have maintained a professional appearance on your social networks for two to five years – two being minimum five being the preferred. Trust me, give them a link and they will check you out. Give them a link that isn’t professional and you may end up on the hiring wall of shame. Hey, you may be able to give them a few ‘lulz’, but you want to show them that you exist to be a professional not a comedian.

Hey, we had some ‘lulz’ here but this humor was conveyed among solid logic and reason in order to assist you in attaining the job you seek. Just as we have been able to sway and persuade while informing, you will be expected to do the same – to invoke emotions through your writing in order to persuade an audience. Do the same and you could be an amazing social media manager.

References

Blanchard, O. (2011). Social media ROI: managing and measuring social media efforts in your organization. Indianapolis: Que Pub.

Engaging Social Media - The Beginning

“A social media program can plug into every type of business function you need it to and help you make it work better, smarter, and faster” (Blanchard, 2011, p. 8). Here we observe the fundamental idea of how important social media is in organizational communication. Before we leap into examples, we should first focus on organizations engage their audiences and how social media plays a large role in that influence.

According to Olivier Blanchard (2011) in order to understand the importance of social media inclusion in an organization, we must first understand the vertical and lateral forces of organizational communication. We will do this in a fun way – nobody really enjoys bars and graphs – so here is a cute puppy providing us with an example of how the one directional vertical engagement works:

Here we have an example of One-Directional Vertical Engagement. Before the advent of social media, organizations (represented as the older bigger golden retriever) could only communicate at the audience (represented by the puppies). In short, their communication was one-direction. The message was sent and the audience would either accept it or not. The audience and consumers could communicate with the organization of course, "through customer service, comment cards or protesting" (Blanchard, 2011, p. 9). Mostly, however, the communication was one-directional. 

Figure two portrays an example of lateral engagement - lateral engagement is the word-of-mouth. Essentially, after the big dog sends the message the puppies decode that message and share it amongst themselves. During this word-of-mouth process, the puppies will encode their own meaning into the original message and diffuse that information to those who have not had a chance to experience the organization's influence. Before social media, chances are that because of each individual's busy schedule, by the time you got around to recommending or criticizing something with another individual it was no longer on your mind (Blanchard, 2011, p. 10). Now that social media exists, the public can share or make comments about an organization and the services it offers in seconds, while it is on your mind, in a way that either endorses the brand or displays dislike. 

All large organizations are a great target for examples, mostly because they are difficult to miss after the dart is thrown. So, for example, let’s take Disney’s 2017 hike on admission prices to their theme parks, their 2017 run-in with the department of labor, and another example of Disney itself and apply the aforementioned rules of engagement.

         In February of 2017, Disney increased their ticket prices to their theme parks making them five dollars more expensive - making what was once a $97 admission for adults, to a $102 admission price (Tuttle, 2017). This hike was reported on by KTLA news and shared amongst its various audiences who, in turn, commented and shared the same news story. Comments raised from "we will have to refinance our house just for a day at Disney" to "Disney hates poor people". Only a month later, KTLA reported and shared another news story to social media outlets this time revealing that Disney had been forcing employees to pay for their uniforms/outfits, often deducting the fee from their paychecks. This meant that their employees were being paid less than minimum wage (CNN Wire, 2017).More comments flooded these social media news updates ranging from, "Disney doesn't care about you or your children, only money" to "Disney should be able to afford to pay their employees more than minimum wage and provide them with an free outfit to boot - shame on you disney". All the while, Disney has been quiet about these occurrences on social media, choosing to focus on promoting their upcoming live-action version of Beauty and the Beast.

Just with these comments alone you can start to get the idea of how an organization, such as the media, will vertically engage their audiences. In turn, you will see how those audiences will diffuse the information via lateral engagement while concurrently encoding their own meanings into the Disney reputation. After encoding their own messages, they then return that information as a comment to the original source.  

References

Blanchard, O. (2011). Social media ROI: managing and measuring social media efforts in your organization. Indianapolis: Que Pub.

CNN Wire. (2017, March 17). Disney Forced by Labor Department to Pay $3.8 Million to Park Workers Charged for Their Costumes. Retrieved March 20, 2017, from http://ktla.com/2017/03/17/disney-forced-by-labor-department-to-pay-3-8-million-to-park-workers-charged-for-their-costumes/

Tuttle. (2017). Disney Park Prices Increase, Universal Studios Will Follow | Money. Retrieved March 20, 2017, from http://time.com/money/4668833/disney-theme-park-prices-universal/