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I’ve been pondering about social media for quite some time now, asking myself whether it’s applicable for all regardless of industry and if so, should you outsource social media. I came upon this great article from Conversation Agent site and this inspires me to write something about social media.  At first, I thought social media is not for everybody, your reputation is at risk here, your brand, your company, profession everything will be revealed. Lately, upon reading and attending various seminars, well indeed it’s for everybody. When you say social media, it’s not just Facebook, MySpace and Twitter let me first define what Social Media is, according to Wikimedia:

“Social media is a term used to describe the type of media that is based on conversation and interaction between people online. Where media means digital words, sounds & pictures which are typically shared via the internet and the value can be cultural, societal or even financial.”

There are many forms of social media like forums, blogs, wikis, video and photo sharing, Q & A and social bookmarking. So from here, it really is for everybody provided that you know exactly what you’re doing. A blog post can make a lot of difference, one wrong move and people will be talking about you. Social media is for all, but not all has the right knowledge to strategize and make the best of what social media can do for you.

Next, should you hire someone to do it? It depends, outsource social media to do what, there are different stages before you actually maintain it.  If we speak of design and development, you can hire someone to do it, depending on what you want to achieve, Facebook has a lot of feature you want to take advantage of and sometimes you just don’t know how, Twitter can be customize but how, monitor social media activity again, how…that’s when you need to outsource that part of your social media campaign. How about if your goal is to brand yourself or your business through the use of social media, that’s a tough one and I suggest you hire a Social Media Strategist.

How about the maintenance, it will If  you ask me, there are several factors to consider, first is your goal, what was your goal in the first place, what do you want to achieve then ask yourself will you let someone handle your Facebook, Twitter, Q & A etc. (like asking yourself will you let someone be you or let someone handle your business who is not actually on the business). Secondly, your product/service, are they knowledgeable enough to know the ins and outs of your business.

Social media is for all but think twice if you want someone to handle your social media, there’s always an option to outsource part of the process but the whole thing, think about it.

If you want to know more visit Valeria Maltoni’s article of Conversation Agent, you’ll see different point of views and pretty much give you an idea in a broader sense. I like her approach and gathering inputs from her Linkdin connections. I don’t know her I just bumped into her article yesterday and I honestly love it and would love to share the link with you.