Why You Should Outsource Your Social Media and Public Relations

Outsourcing itself is nothing new. Firms have long hired outside vendors to handle marketing, advertising, public relations, media buying, event planning, web design, printing, and many other services that are deemed by companies as "necessary functions best left to experts". And when it comes to the time-consuming tasks of social media and public relations, seeking outside expertise is a smart idea. So we call it "in-sourcing" because the key is to integrate your outsourced services with your team and mission cohesively, fluidly, and successfully.

That's what outsourcing does: creates an efficient 24/7 team of experts for your organization, removing workplace inefficiencies such as time, expense, and inexperience when strategizing, creating, planning, implementing, maintaining, and coordinating the intricate details of a successful PR campaign

Benefits of Outsourcing Your Public Relations/Social Media

Public Relations & Social Media is 24/7, not 9-5...

In a digital age, news, developments, and crises happen instantly and spread through social media even faster. Any positive or negative effects on your organization need to be reacted to just as quickly; as such, the reactionary nature of PR and social networking requires a 24/7 work ethic and involvement. The days of pitching media and writing press releases for eight hours a day have been trumped by trends of sending brief messages throughout the day. If you don't have staff that reacts instantly to positive, negative, or lucrative developments, even when off typical 9-5 work hours, your organization could be left in the dust by competitors and could be pushed to the back of consumer's minds. Hire a person or firm that understands the 24/7 nature of PR and your organization will be well-prepared for developments and happenings that are good, bad, or ugly.

... and is one of the most time consuming workplace tasks.

Social media, when performed incorrectly and inefficiently, is a huge time sink. Simply posting news items on wall's and feed's or trying to build your number of "Like's" and "Tweets" isn't enough to maintain a competitive presence in the media landscape. Creating profiles and maintaining blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Digg, and dozens of other social networking accounts can be time consuming tasks that drain your organization's and employee's time for other important tasks. Worse, having employee's involved in social networking may lead to slacking off on their own social networks, reducing work focus and ethic. Time is the biggest advantage SM agencies offer to the workplace and for companies without the resources to adequately bring a dedicated social media expert on board, outsourcing is the best option. Outsourcing your to an outside agency allows your organization to keep employee's time and energy focused and efficient.

Saves costs (making your dollars go further).

Saving money and stretching your dollars further is a juggling task on every firm's mind. In tough economies, firms need to do more with less. Budgets for PR and social strategy can be very tight, especially during a slow economic recovery. Yet smart companies and organizations understand that when times are tough, public relations and social media are important cost-effective alternatives to traditional marketing and advertising campaigns. By outsourcing those tasks, your firm is able to work within your budgetary framework, reduces overhead and operating costs (such as office space and employee benefits), and increases worker efficiency by allowing them to focus on more important and concentrated tasks.

These taskse aren't "filler work for staff".

Public relations is the art of helping the public see your organization in the most beneficial and cutting edge light. Poorly written and inexperienced public relations work shows the world just the opposite of what you intended. Employers who put less of a focus on public perception tend to take a "do it yourself" approach and assign PR and SM tasks to inexperienced workers in an effort to save money. Assigning workers that lack experience, required skill sets, and strategy tools for an extensive social media and public relations campaign is not a cost-efficient option in the long run; in fact, factoring in months of training, salary, and trial and error periods makes it a potentially expensive proposition with little to show for at the end of the day. Social media alone requires the art of being social and creative, a skill not all employee's excel in. Bring in the experts in public relations and social media - it's a more cost-efficient option that includes a team oriented, creative, goal-focused perspective.

Integration made easier and sensible.

Social media has redefined the traditional tactics of PR. Certain aspects of PR fuels the "going viral" part of social media and social media redesigns public relations from a press release into an online elevator speech. With the close ties between these two forms of communication, having separate people for public relations and for social media doesn't integrate your message and brand as clearly as possible. Which is why outsourcing your campaigns to the same expert team is the most sensible option when creating an integrated campaign among all media outlets.

By outsourcing, you'll end up working with creative experts with a 24/7 work ethic and an eye for integration, helping your business or organization save money. Outsourcing is starting to make a lot of sense.