You don’t need to do all your social media marketing activities yourself. Instead, you can outsource all or part of these activities to a professional freelancer. Here’s how to do it in four steps:
- Decide What To Outsource
- Distribute Want Ads
- Determine the Best Candidate
- Define Your Project
- Develop a Good Relationship
You can download a PDF of this post from here, and/or you can download the podcast from here.
Let’s take a closer look at each step…
Step 1: Decide What To Outsource
First, you need to determine your needs and then decide what to outsource. You can outsource every part of your social media campaigns. Or you can decide to outsource pieces of it, such as:
- Overall strategy (e.g., what to post and how often).
- Creating text content.
- Creating graphics.
- Producing videos.
- Creating any other content.
- Publishing the content.
- Editing/proofing the content.
- Conversion optimization (testing and tracking).
- Social media comments and interaction.
- Handling customer service inquiries.
- Setting up paid advertising.
- Designing viral content campaigns.
- Moderating comments and/or a social media group.
And anything else you plan to do on social media.
To help you decide what to outsource, ask yourself these questions:
- What tasks are you good at?
- Which ones do you enjoy?
- Which tasks require skills that you don’t possess?
- Which tasks do you find unpleasant?
- How long will each of these tasks take you?
- How much will it cost to hire a freelancer to complete the task?
- What high-value tasks could you be focusing on instead if you outsourced your social media campaigns?
NOTE: Some people think that doing the task themselves is “free,” but that’s not true. Your time is worth something, and usually that means you should focus on high value tasks.
For example, let’s suppose you want to make $100,000 this year working 1000 hours (that’s about 20 hours per week for 50 weeks). That means each hour of your time is worth $100.
So let’s suppose you’re looking at a task that will take you five hours to do. That’s $500 worth of your time. If you can find someone to do it for less than $500, then that is a very good deal for you – and well worth the cost of the freelancer. And in the case of tasks that you don’t know how to do or you wouldn’t do a very good job, hiring a freelancer is a good idea even if it costs you less to do it yourself.
So figure out what you want to outsource, and then move onto the next step…
Step 2: Distribute Want-Ads
Now that you know what you need, it’s time to find someone who can get the job done. So what you’ll do is distribute “want ads” and project ads far and wide to get as much exposure as possible.
NOTE: At this point you’re merely looking to create a big list of potential freelancers. In the next step you’ll select the best candidate.
Here’s what to do:
- Post project ads on freelancing sites such as UpWork.com, Freelance.com and Guru.com.
- Post on your social media platforms to let followers know you’re looking for help.
- Ask colleagues for recommendations of freelancers they’ve worked with in the past.
- Post want ads locally to find freelancers on sites such as CraigsList.org, Facebook “swap and shop” type groups, and through your local newspapers (including college newspapers).
- Post on business and freelancing groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, where allowed.
- Post on business and freelancing forums, where allowed.
- Run a Google search for the type of freelancer or services you need (e.g., “ghostwriter” or “freelance video production”). Be sure to check the sponsored ads as well as organic results.
- Post a want ad on your blog.
- Send a note to your newsletter list.
- Ask your joint venture partners to help you spread the word.
- Ask your social media followers to help you spread the word.
We’ll conclude this 2-part series in the next segment.