Pros and cons: outsourcing social media for your salon or spa
The pressure to create content and images, and to manage social scheduling and engagement, can be overwhelming. If you’re too busy running the business, then it’s time for someone else to do it for you so you don’t lose ground to competitors.
To decide whether you should go internal or external, you need to determine whether you have internal staff resources available to help solve the problem. If your social media budget is under £100 a month, find a way to keep it internal. You can offer a team member extra responsibility, training and possibly an incentive for success.
If sourcing help internally isn’t an option, then you’ll need to define the available budget as x% of what revenue social should generate for your business. If your budget is between £100–£300 per month, then find a virtual assistant with social media skills on an hourly rate. If your budget is between £300–£600 per month, then a small local start-up agency should be able to help. However, if your budget is above £600 per month, you can engage larger, experienced agencies like Fix Our Social, for example.
If you go with an external solution, then let them pitch you the plan. Avoid telling them what you think you need and allow them to understand your business objectives fully. Either way, ensure you create a tight brief around outcomes, content types, with no approval processes, and measures of success. You need a frictionless process and full trust in whoever is going to help.
Simon Hutchings is co-founder of FixOurSocial Social Media Management and will be speaking at Professional Beauty London on the Digital Skills Stage,