Is Your Social Media Consultant Taking You for a Ride?
If you’re looking to hire a social media consultant, it’s probably because you are looking for someone more familiar with the social media space than you are. While a competent consultant can quickly get your business up to speed in the proper online communities–resulting in more sales and improved customer satisfaction–the wrong consultant can cost you thousands of dollars and months of lost time, and possible do irreparable harm to your brand name and reputation.
Give how low the barrier to entry is for getting involved with social media (it really only takes 5-10 minutes of filling out a few online forms), it can be harder to spot the good social media consultants amidst the bad. The more popular social media becomes, the more quacks and witch doctors are self-appointing themselves “social media experts.”
Here are seven signs you should stay away from a social media consultant:
1: They Signed Up for Twitter in 2008 or Later
A skilled social media consultant is an early adopter. Hiring a social media consultant who comes late to the game immediately sets your business up at a disadvantage for participating in new and relevant social networks early–and the earlier you have a social media presence, the more influence and visibility you’ll have.
While you may have heard about it only recently, Twitter has been around since 2006. Signing up in 2008 or after means this alleged social media consultant missed the boat by more than two years. Remember, this is allegedly their area of expertise.
You can use When Did I Start Twitter? to determine the date someone signed up for Twitter.
Just in case they try to pull a fast one on you: you can change a username from within the same Twitter account, so wanting/needing a different username from the one they first signed up with is not justification for having a newer account signup date.
2: They Don’t Have a Blog
Some people have been blogging for 10 or more years at this point. Blogs are one of the foundations of social media; any consultant worth their weight will know how to set one up, optimize it for search engines, provide relevant content, and interact with the community. If they lacked the initiative to do this for themselves, they’ll similarly lack initiative when working on your projects.
It’s true that microblogging environments like Twitter have replaced blogging for some purposes, but there are still many times when you need to share a message in more than 140 characters.
3: They Don’t Actively Use a CRM
Not using a CRM (customer relationship management tool) is basically the equivalent of saying that this consultant will cultivate relationships and connections on your behalf, but will not share those contacts with you.
A CRM logs basic details (names, company names, website URLs, Twitter handles) as well as notes and copies of emails, Twitter messages, and other social media messages exchanged. This way you have a permanent record of the various conversations and connections involving your brand.
I’ll be the first to admit that no CRM tool has full caught up with the needs of social media, and this can require a bit more copying and pasting than an efficiency consultant would like. However, just because the tools aren’t perfect doesn’t mean the job doesn’t need doing. When the social media consultant eventually leaves, it’s critical that you have a record of the body of work they accumulated that you can continue to build upon. Otherwise, all the money you spent in consulting fees goes straight down the drain.
Anecdotally, a lack of familiarity with a CRM is indicative of a lack of business and consulting experience in general. A competent consultant would use a CRM to keep track of their own clients and leads.
4: They Claim You Can’t Measure ROI for Social Media
The myth that social media efforts cannot be measured or tracked is pervasive, and also completely and utterly false. Every other marketing effort, from yellow page ads to infomercials to billboards, can be measured; on the Internet, efforts can be measured with ten times more (not less) accuracy.
Every ROI (return-on-investment) calculation for social media ultimately goes back to how the social media consultant’s efforts are driving sales for your business. Even goals like increased customer satisfaction or providing more timely customer service ultimately tie back to increased sales.
Be wary of measuring things that don’t actually impact your bottom line. For example, if your website gets 1,000 new visitors this week, but makes zero new sales, you did not get a return on your investment (unless your goal is to increase traffic numbers to charge advertisers higher rates). You want your social media efforts to bring in qualified, relevant traffic—not just clicks, but sales.
5: They Want to Do Everything Themselves Instead of Showing You How
Social media is a set of communication tools, just like email and telephones. You wouldn’t install a telephone system and have the guy from AT&T make and answer all of your phone calls for you indefinitely; you’d learn how to use the phone yourself. The same goes for social media.
That said, many business owners are very busy and naturally delegate work, including answering phones/emails and social media interactions. They key is that you should choose to continue to employ the social media consultant to work on your campaigns, and not need to continue to pay them because you don’t know how to replicate what they’re doing (or know what they’re doing at all).
6: They’re Okay with Spamming Your [Potential] Customers
Ask any potential social media consultant how they plan to increase your followers, on Twitter and elsewhere. If they mention any sort of tool or service that adds new followers automatically, run—don’t walk—away. The same goes if they suggest purchasing an email list. You don’t like receiving email spam; so why would you introduce yourself to potential new customers by spamming them?
The only correct way to build social media relationships is for a human to build those relationships. While many tools are great for identifying which social media participants compose your target market, reaching out to them with an automatic robot is anything but social.
7: They Have No Proven Experience
Before you pay anyone for social media consulting work, ask to see tangible results that they have delivered in the past. Ideally, these results will involve past business clients, but efforts to promote their own services or blog(s) within the social media space can provide equal proof of their competence.
Social media is inherently public-facing. Unless there were truly unusual circumstances, a quick Google should be able to show you how successful (or unsuccessful) their past social media efforts were. Try searching for both the name of the company/blog they were promoting, and search as though you were trying to find that service but did not know the company name. For example, if they did promotional work for XYZ Hot Dog Stand in Seattle, try searching for hot dogs in Seattle and see how often (if at all) their client shows up.
While you’re at it, make sure you Google their name. Unless they have a very common name, a strong social media presence will immediately be apparent within the first few pages of the search. (Try searching “Marina Martin” and see what comes up on the first page.)
(Photo by mugley.)