Business Making Money

The Social Media Marketing Series is supported by Webtrends Apps, which lets you quickly create and publish Facebook, iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. Learn more about it here or keep up with all Webtrends Social products by following their blog.

Sadly there’s no magic rubric for deciding whether an in-house social media workforce, a social media consultant, or an agency will best be able to meet your particular business needs. Like almost every business decision, it depends on your business’s goals, budget and particular situation.

There are, however, definite pros and cons to each approach. We’ve highlighted some of the most important factors to consider for each style of social media team.

If your business has gone through the process of deciding which type of social media team to instate, let us know about the factors you considered and how you came to your final decision in the comments below.

In-House Team

Handling all social media efforts in-house is often the most affordable route for small business owners. Per hour, an agency’s time or a consultant’s time is going to be much more expensive than a full or part-time employee.

But it’s a big job. Jamie Turner, the coauthor of How To Make Money with Social Media recommends that businesses contribute no less than 25% of one full-time employee’s time to social media efforts. There are, however, benefits to making this time investment.

“People inside can move quicker and always have their finger on the pulse of the company, which makes it easier for them to respond [on social media],” Turner says.

Outsourcing your social media presence to an agency, in addition to costing more, can be slow on a day-to-day basis. An agency that is handling a Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter account might need to correspond with the company before it’s able to answer a question. Or it might need to ask for approval when unsure if an idea is in sync with the company’s overall business strategy.

Social Media Consultant

There isn’t really a narrow definition of “social media consultant.” Some have niche specialties and can help a company’s in-house team accomplish a specific social media task. Some help companies put an overall strategy in place and then leave the execution up to the company. And others are more like off-site community managers who execute the social media tasks for the company for an undetermined amount of time.

One advantage most consultants have over agencies is that they’re less expensive. “Typically you can pay [a consultant up to] $300 to $500 an hour,” says Jason Keath, the founder of social media education business Social Fresh. “If you put that same person inside of an agency, you’re adding a lot of overhead; you’re adding the corporate structure on top of it that has to be paid for as well.” Also on the cost front, consultants often require smaller time commitments than agencies.

Companies that are looking to fill in a specific aspect of their strategy often find hiring a consultant to be the best approach because they can seek a specific person that fits the niche they need help with. “If you have an in-house team, there may be a lot of knowledge there — and let’s say it’s digital PR knowledge,” says Keath, who has been consulting for the past two-and-a-half years. “But let’s say this team has never done blogger outreach before. Obviously bringing in somebody who has done blogger outreach is really going to speed up the process.”

Companies that plan to start their own in-house teams also may benefit from a consultant approach. Social media consultant Mirna Bard sees herself as an educator.

“Although an agency has results in mind, they are typically not the educators and they sometimes only look at the marketing aspect of social media,” she says. “They may also take a tactical instead of a strategic approach. Many times agencies or in-house teams are used mostly for development and execution; they are not meant to be business advisers who make overall business decisions.”

A consultant can help develop a social media strategy in line with your business objectives and play a role in teaching your in-house team how to execute it.

Agency

Most large PR agencies and many advertising agencies now have branches for handling a business’s entire social media presence. This kind of work differs from that of most consultants in that the agencies handle both strategy and execution. Jim Tobin, the president of Ignite Social Media, counts this among an agency’s advantages.

“Since we also execute for our clients, we have a good understanding of what’s realistic,” he says. “If we suggest things, chances are we’re also going to have to implement them.”

Another argument for using an agency is the wide range of experience that they generally have. In-house teams are typically isolated within their own companies and industries. Agencies have experience across multiple industries and may be able to spot a good idea that an in-house team would miss.

“Social media changes so rapidly that when you work with an agency, they’re typically more on the cutting edge of what’s coming down the pike because they’ve got 100 people out there looking around at the new stuff and thinking about the new stuff and sitting in meetings saying ‘hey, have you heard this new use of class='blippr-nobr'>Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">foursquare?’ ” explains Turner.

More people who interact with more clients have obvious benefits in keeping up to speed on the latest social media strategies. But many consultants would argue that it’s more important to have a deep understanding in a valuable niche. Both Keath and Bard have done consulting work for agencies that wanted to learn more about social media strategy.

Hybrid Approach

Most companies use some combination of the above three approaches. Turner says he often sees companies who have an in-house person “on the front line” who runs accounts and answers questions via social media, but turn to consultant or agencies for high-level social media strategy.

“It’s a collaborative approach, even if you go with an agency,” explains Tobin, whose agency handles the social media strategy for companies like Microsoft, Disney and Nike. “The client contributes the business objectives and knows what can and can’t be supported…the agency brings the expertise in the space [because it lives] in social media marketing all day. Together those can be really powerful.”

Series Supported by Webtrends/>

The Social Media Marketing Series is supported by Webtrends Apps, which lets you quickly create and publish class='blippr-nobr'>Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook, iPhone, iPad, and class='blippr-nobr'>Androidclass="blippr-nobr">Android apps. Learn more about it here or keep up with all Webtrends Social products by following their blogclass="blippr-nobr">blog.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- Inside Group Buying: 7 Small Business Success Stories/> - How Social Search Will Transform the SEO Industry/> - 6 Tips on Starting a Digital Business from the Founder of Pandora/> - 5 Big Social Media Questions from Small Business Owners/> - 10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, disorderly

Image Credit: class='blippr-nobr'>Flickrclass="blippr-nobr">Flickr, Pieter Musterd

For more Business coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Businessclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Business channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

To summarize an hour of dialogue, you should at some point have a product that your readers will want. You should give a lot of free content away, but even when it comes to content, you can charge for some amount, and if your content is good enough, people will pay for the premium stuff. "You can tell them about ninety percent, and they'll pay money just to get the final ten percent," so they know they have the whole picture, Clark says.



Making money blogging will not happen overnight. Sometimes it may seem like this is possible, but in reality, it takes a lot of work. "Build something that is real and something that matters to people," Rowse advises. He shared a story about how he launched a product one day and literally watched the sales roll in. It was as if he had hit a button, and the cash just started flowing, but then he realized he had been working hard up to that point for over two years, promoting the blog, writing two posts a day, doing SEO, press releases, etc. It wasn't overnight. 



You're not scalable, meaning that as your audience grows and more people want to connect with you, there will be a point where it just becomes too much. You have to set boundaries, otherwise you will have no time for yourself and your family. 



Eventually, you're going to have to "get real" about how many meaningful connections you can make in a day, Simone says, adding, "That's part of growing up in social media.”



When they say "no one actually wants that much authenticity," they mean that nobody cares about what you did last night, who you were with, what you had for breakfast, etc. In other words, don't show everybody everything about yourself, because you're not writing for you. You're writing for them. Be who you want to be for your audience. 



Ultimately, you're blogging and using social media to sell, but you can't just go around selling to people, because they won't have it. It just doesn't work. You have to make them want to buy. "You're selling yourself," says Clark. If you provide enough value to your audience, they will want to buy what you have to offer if it expands upon the value you're already giving them. "The content is the marketing," he says. 



Just having a blog is not a business. If you want it to be a business you have to treat it like one, Rowse says. This is basically an extension of number 2. 



The most important of the seven points is that no one is reading your blog. As Simone says, there are hundreds of millions of blogs, and that includes blogs on your topic. You have to write it in a way that is fresh, and either entertaining or informative. The good news is that you don't need "monster traffic". You just need a good, steady core audience for advertising to do well. 

<b>News</b> - Rep: Blake Lively, Penn Badgley Split! - Celebrity <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

"They're still good friends," an insider tells the new Us Weekly.

Fox <b>News</b> Crew Gets Scolded At Democratic Meeting (VIDEO)

A Fox News camera crew showed up unannounced at a Democratic meeting in Wisconsin Monday, prompting a confrontation that eventually forced the show's producer into a rather startling admission: he understands why Democrats are wary of ...

Telefuture | Old <b>News</b> Report | TVs Merging with Computers | Mediaite

Well, print media, you were warned. A 30 year old news report from NBC news, archived by Vortex Technology, discusses the future of television in a segment creatively entitled Telefuture. In it, they spend a lof of time examining the ...

bench craft company complaints
bench craft company complaints

<b>News</b> - Rep: Blake Lively, Penn Badgley Split! - Celebrity <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

"They're still good friends," an insider tells the new Us Weekly.

Fox <b>News</b> Crew Gets Scolded At Democratic Meeting (VIDEO)

A Fox News camera crew showed up unannounced at a Democratic meeting in Wisconsin Monday, prompting a confrontation that eventually forced the show's producer into a rather startling admission: he understands why Democrats are wary of ...

Telefuture | Old <b>News</b> Report | TVs Merging with Computers | Mediaite

Well, print media, you were warned. A 30 year old news report from NBC news, archived by Vortex Technology, discusses the future of television in a segment creatively entitled Telefuture. In it, they spend a lof of time examining the ...

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

The Social Media Marketing Series is supported by Webtrends Apps, which lets you quickly create and publish Facebook, iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. Learn more about it here or keep up with all Webtrends Social products by following their blog.

Sadly there’s no magic rubric for deciding whether an in-house social media workforce, a social media consultant, or an agency will best be able to meet your particular business needs. Like almost every business decision, it depends on your business’s goals, budget and particular situation.

There are, however, definite pros and cons to each approach. We’ve highlighted some of the most important factors to consider for each style of social media team.

If your business has gone through the process of deciding which type of social media team to instate, let us know about the factors you considered and how you came to your final decision in the comments below.

In-House Team

Handling all social media efforts in-house is often the most affordable route for small business owners. Per hour, an agency’s time or a consultant’s time is going to be much more expensive than a full or part-time employee.

But it’s a big job. Jamie Turner, the coauthor of How To Make Money with Social Media recommends that businesses contribute no less than 25% of one full-time employee’s time to social media efforts. There are, however, benefits to making this time investment.

“People inside can move quicker and always have their finger on the pulse of the company, which makes it easier for them to respond [on social media],” Turner says.

Outsourcing your social media presence to an agency, in addition to costing more, can be slow on a day-to-day basis. An agency that is handling a Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter account might need to correspond with the company before it’s able to answer a question. Or it might need to ask for approval when unsure if an idea is in sync with the company’s overall business strategy.

Social Media Consultant

There isn’t really a narrow definition of “social media consultant.” Some have niche specialties and can help a company’s in-house team accomplish a specific social media task. Some help companies put an overall strategy in place and then leave the execution up to the company. And others are more like off-site community managers who execute the social media tasks for the company for an undetermined amount of time.

One advantage most consultants have over agencies is that they’re less expensive. “Typically you can pay [a consultant up to] $300 to $500 an hour,” says Jason Keath, the founder of social media education business Social Fresh. “If you put that same person inside of an agency, you’re adding a lot of overhead; you’re adding the corporate structure on top of it that has to be paid for as well.” Also on the cost front, consultants often require smaller time commitments than agencies.

Companies that are looking to fill in a specific aspect of their strategy often find hiring a consultant to be the best approach because they can seek a specific person that fits the niche they need help with. “If you have an in-house team, there may be a lot of knowledge there — and let’s say it’s digital PR knowledge,” says Keath, who has been consulting for the past two-and-a-half years. “But let’s say this team has never done blogger outreach before. Obviously bringing in somebody who has done blogger outreach is really going to speed up the process.”

Companies that plan to start their own in-house teams also may benefit from a consultant approach. Social media consultant Mirna Bard sees herself as an educator.

“Although an agency has results in mind, they are typically not the educators and they sometimes only look at the marketing aspect of social media,” she says. “They may also take a tactical instead of a strategic approach. Many times agencies or in-house teams are used mostly for development and execution; they are not meant to be business advisers who make overall business decisions.”

A consultant can help develop a social media strategy in line with your business objectives and play a role in teaching your in-house team how to execute it.

Agency

Most large PR agencies and many advertising agencies now have branches for handling a business’s entire social media presence. This kind of work differs from that of most consultants in that the agencies handle both strategy and execution. Jim Tobin, the president of Ignite Social Media, counts this among an agency’s advantages.

“Since we also execute for our clients, we have a good understanding of what’s realistic,” he says. “If we suggest things, chances are we’re also going to have to implement them.”

Another argument for using an agency is the wide range of experience that they generally have. In-house teams are typically isolated within their own companies and industries. Agencies have experience across multiple industries and may be able to spot a good idea that an in-house team would miss.

“Social media changes so rapidly that when you work with an agency, they’re typically more on the cutting edge of what’s coming down the pike because they’ve got 100 people out there looking around at the new stuff and thinking about the new stuff and sitting in meetings saying ‘hey, have you heard this new use of class='blippr-nobr'>Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">foursquare?’ ” explains Turner.

More people who interact with more clients have obvious benefits in keeping up to speed on the latest social media strategies. But many consultants would argue that it’s more important to have a deep understanding in a valuable niche. Both Keath and Bard have done consulting work for agencies that wanted to learn more about social media strategy.

Hybrid Approach

Most companies use some combination of the above three approaches. Turner says he often sees companies who have an in-house person “on the front line” who runs accounts and answers questions via social media, but turn to consultant or agencies for high-level social media strategy.

“It’s a collaborative approach, even if you go with an agency,” explains Tobin, whose agency handles the social media strategy for companies like Microsoft, Disney and Nike. “The client contributes the business objectives and knows what can and can’t be supported…the agency brings the expertise in the space [because it lives] in social media marketing all day. Together those can be really powerful.”

Series Supported by Webtrends/>

The Social Media Marketing Series is supported by Webtrends Apps, which lets you quickly create and publish class='blippr-nobr'>Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook, iPhone, iPad, and class='blippr-nobr'>Androidclass="blippr-nobr">Android apps. Learn more about it here or keep up with all Webtrends Social products by following their blogclass="blippr-nobr">blog.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- Inside Group Buying: 7 Small Business Success Stories/> - How Social Search Will Transform the SEO Industry/> - 6 Tips on Starting a Digital Business from the Founder of Pandora/> - 5 Big Social Media Questions from Small Business Owners/> - 10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, disorderly

Image Credit: class='blippr-nobr'>Flickrclass="blippr-nobr">Flickr, Pieter Musterd

For more Business coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Businessclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Business channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

To summarize an hour of dialogue, you should at some point have a product that your readers will want. You should give a lot of free content away, but even when it comes to content, you can charge for some amount, and if your content is good enough, people will pay for the premium stuff. "You can tell them about ninety percent, and they'll pay money just to get the final ten percent," so they know they have the whole picture, Clark says.



Making money blogging will not happen overnight. Sometimes it may seem like this is possible, but in reality, it takes a lot of work. "Build something that is real and something that matters to people," Rowse advises. He shared a story about how he launched a product one day and literally watched the sales roll in. It was as if he had hit a button, and the cash just started flowing, but then he realized he had been working hard up to that point for over two years, promoting the blog, writing two posts a day, doing SEO, press releases, etc. It wasn't overnight. 



You're not scalable, meaning that as your audience grows and more people want to connect with you, there will be a point where it just becomes too much. You have to set boundaries, otherwise you will have no time for yourself and your family. 



Eventually, you're going to have to "get real" about how many meaningful connections you can make in a day, Simone says, adding, "That's part of growing up in social media.”



When they say "no one actually wants that much authenticity," they mean that nobody cares about what you did last night, who you were with, what you had for breakfast, etc. In other words, don't show everybody everything about yourself, because you're not writing for you. You're writing for them. Be who you want to be for your audience. 



Ultimately, you're blogging and using social media to sell, but you can't just go around selling to people, because they won't have it. It just doesn't work. You have to make them want to buy. "You're selling yourself," says Clark. If you provide enough value to your audience, they will want to buy what you have to offer if it expands upon the value you're already giving them. "The content is the marketing," he says. 



Just having a blog is not a business. If you want it to be a business you have to treat it like one, Rowse says. This is basically an extension of number 2. 



The most important of the seven points is that no one is reading your blog. As Simone says, there are hundreds of millions of blogs, and that includes blogs on your topic. You have to write it in a way that is fresh, and either entertaining or informative. The good news is that you don't need "monster traffic". You just need a good, steady core audience for advertising to do well. 

bench craft company complaints

<b>News</b> - Rep: Blake Lively, Penn Badgley Split! - Celebrity <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

"They're still good friends," an insider tells the new Us Weekly.

Fox <b>News</b> Crew Gets Scolded At Democratic Meeting (VIDEO)

A Fox News camera crew showed up unannounced at a Democratic meeting in Wisconsin Monday, prompting a confrontation that eventually forced the show's producer into a rather startling admission: he understands why Democrats are wary of ...

Telefuture | Old <b>News</b> Report | TVs Merging with Computers | Mediaite

Well, print media, you were warned. A 30 year old news report from NBC news, archived by Vortex Technology, discusses the future of television in a segment creatively entitled Telefuture. In it, they spend a lof of time examining the ...

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

<b>News</b> - Rep: Blake Lively, Penn Badgley Split! - Celebrity <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

"They're still good friends," an insider tells the new Us Weekly.

Fox <b>News</b> Crew Gets Scolded At Democratic Meeting (VIDEO)

A Fox News camera crew showed up unannounced at a Democratic meeting in Wisconsin Monday, prompting a confrontation that eventually forced the show's producer into a rather startling admission: he understands why Democrats are wary of ...

Telefuture | Old <b>News</b> Report | TVs Merging with Computers | Mediaite

Well, print media, you were warned. A 30 year old news report from NBC news, archived by Vortex Technology, discusses the future of television in a segment creatively entitled Telefuture. In it, they spend a lof of time examining the ...

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

<b>News</b> - Rep: Blake Lively, Penn Badgley Split! - Celebrity <b>News</b> <b>...</b>

"They're still good friends," an insider tells the new Us Weekly.

Fox <b>News</b> Crew Gets Scolded At Democratic Meeting (VIDEO)

A Fox News camera crew showed up unannounced at a Democratic meeting in Wisconsin Monday, prompting a confrontation that eventually forced the show's producer into a rather startling admission: he understands why Democrats are wary of ...

Telefuture | Old <b>News</b> Report | TVs Merging with Computers | Mediaite

Well, print media, you were warned. A 30 year old news report from NBC news, archived by Vortex Technology, discusses the future of television in a segment creatively entitled Telefuture. In it, they spend a lof of time examining the ...

bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints