Why Are Social Media Consultants in Denial About Social Media Outsourcing?
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Mack Collier reacts to the E-Commerce Times story on social media outsourcing –
While outsourcing might be necessary for the near-term, I would encourage companies to make every effort NOW to get up to speed on using social media sites and tools themselves. If knowing how to communicate with your customers via social media will become a necessary business function moving forward, then it’s only logical that such businesses should make moves NOW to put themselves in a position where they can handle these functions themselves.
1. Instead of outsourcing social media projects to a consultant or social media firm, hire them to train your company on using these tools.
2. If you DO outsource a social media project, make sure that part of the services that the consultant or firm provides is training on using the tools.
3. When hiring employees to work in your marketing, PR and customer service departments especially, put a premium on familiarity with social media sites and tools.
I’m amused that social media consultants are so threatened by the inevitability of social media outsourcing. It seems to me that most social media consultants suffer from a denial syndrome similar to the one most newspapers suffer from.
It’s obvious to me that the parts of social media that resemble B2C lead generation and customer support will need to be outsourced, albeit with adult supervision, like inbound and outbound call centers have been almost universally outsourced.
Corporates do need to hire employess who have familiarity with social media tools, but these employees will supervise B2C lead generation and customer support on social media, not do it themselves.
Most corporates will quickly realize that it’s costly to build either the capability or the bandwidth to manage social media interactions in- house and the only way to engage with social media at scale is to outsourse it.
Social Media Outsourcing is not something to be feared, it’s something to be celebrated, because it will mark the maturity of social media adoption in corporates.
Related posts:
- Technology Adoption Cycles and Social Media Outsourcing
- Social Media Outsourcing: The Onshore vs. Offshore Decision
- Next Big Thing: Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) (Part 1 of 2)
- Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) Leads the Third Wave of Indian Outsourcing
- My Interview with E-Commerce Times on Social Media Outsourcing
mack collier 4:21 pm on December 15, 2008 Permalink |
“I’m amused that social media consultants are so threatened by the inevitability of social media outsourcing.”
If a company outsources their social media efforts, who are they likely going to hire?
A social media consultant just like me. So why would getting more business make me feel ‘threatened’? Not following your logic here at all.
Gaurav Mishra 1:22 am on January 5, 2009 Permalink |
@Mack: Well, I think that, in 2009, brands will begin to see that parts of social media are very similar to customer support and need to handled with a similar process, with similar metrics. The type of outsourcing I’m talking about doesn’t involve one or two highly skilled consultants like you, it involves dozens of people doing content tagging, or handling customer complaints. I’m also talking about offshoring to countries like India as an intergral part of social media outsourcing. If such social media outsourcing happens — and it will, if not in 2009, then in 2010 — then, companies won’t hire social media experts like you, but larger and more efficient BPO like companies.
Pratibha Rathore 3:41 pm on February 14, 2009 Permalink |
Hi Gaurav,
I like your post and I agree with you totally. As you said, I have also experience this syndrome (denial by SM consultant). I have also seen a couple of other posts. Actually we are also in this space and I am experimenting with the outsourcing of SM. What has been your experience so far. Would be glad to hear about it.