Insourcing VS Outsourcing Social Media Management

If your brand’s social media management happens from 9 to 5 in a 24/7 world, it’s time to rethink your priorities. That’s like fire departments only putting out fires during daylight business hours. Ludicrous, right? Fire isn’t on the clock, and consumer opinion isn’t either.

So why is your social media strategy stuck in business-as-usual hours?

The 1980s called and they want their customer service strategy back.

You Do You the Best

We know you know your brand better than anyone. Your team has the history, the savvy, the brand-awareness that makes them indispensable in communicating who you are and where you stand.

That’s undeniable.

But wouldn’t it be great if you could bring that know-how to the social media management table without bearing the weight of the world on your shoulders? Isn’t that what we’re talking about? The weight of the world? In this business era, products and services cross borders to be consumed around the world, around the clock, to be spoken about by people in every culture, every language.

You could certainly try to diversify how you structure social media management, but you’d be reinventing a wheel designed better by others. Instead, identifying your needs and bringing a team onboard to help you meet them will be key to your social media success.

A 24/7 world needs 24/7 solutions. Outsourcing your social media management means your brand never sleeps.

At ICUC, we have a team of over 600 professionals around the world – in over 30 languages, in every time zone. While Los Angeles is deep in slumber, our London staff are fired up over their second cup of coffee, as the Shanghai team’s day is coming to an end. Whatever hour it is, we’ve got someone, somewhere, dedicated to every brand we represent.

Real-time problems need immediate solutions, not an overnight time delay because everyone on your team is stuck in the same three-hour window of North American business hours. Our remote team is never off the clock.

When norovirus from a staff lunch knocks your team out, we’ll be there. When statutory and seasonal holidays come around, we’ve got your staffing solution. Your whole office can celebrate the July 4th weekend, because we’ll have you covered from afar. We promise, we’ll only disrupt the BBQ if anything other than holiday fireworks blows up.

Divide and Conquer: Outsourcing for the Win

For the first two decades of the internet, building social media management teams got done by executives who didn’t understand the technologies they were hiring people to manage. If someone talked a good game and used the right buzzwords, they got the gig. Those execs didn’t understand the scope, the implications, the benefits, or the consequences behind the jobs needing doing. It’s no wonder so many brands have failed over the years.

After all, who knows everything about everything? Every company has people who do certain things extremely well, so they rise through the ranks. But someone who’s a product development mastermind or a distribution genius or a numbers whiz is seldom a communications expert.

And even communication pros rarely grasp the ever-changing world of social media. Marshall MacLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message.” Today, that’s truer than it’s ever been. A message on YouTube is unique to YouTube, like a tweet is to Twitter, and an update is to Facebook. Different platforms need different strategies.

Platforms are not interchangeable, but some brands think they are, and these same brands say, “Well, we haven’t seen returns on our social media strategies, so we’re not investing heavily there.”

Of course they don’t see returns. They don’t understand the platforms, let alone master them, and until they change strategies, their “social media doesn’t pay” mentality will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

These companies convert traffic, put out fires, or spot trends or catastrophes developing before they explode.

It’s strange that some companies realize they need to outsource the creation of a new logo, or the decorating of a new the office, but won’t use expert social media teams to manage their worldwide reputation.

Because that’s what it’s about: Managing your reputation around the world, 24/7.

Management versus Masterminding

There’s a misnomer that outsourcing social media management is like letting someone else take the wheel and drive. Sure, it can be, if that’s what you want.

We think that’s unwise, though.

After all, you know your brand. You’re the pros on doing you, aren’t you? Think of it as you driving, but Google Maps providing the route. You get there better with a little navigational help, don’t you?

This is true with social media management, too. Coming up messages, thinking up strategies that define who your brand is and how it’s perceived, that’s different from monitoring your YouTube channel to purge hate-speech and nastiness in the comments. You do the message, we’ll help you spread it, then we’ll manage the response.

We’re pros at that. With our human-led algorithms, we monitor channels across all platforms, around the world, in real time. We’ll escalate matters needing responses from your HQ and we’ll know when we can use a pre-fab response perfect for the moment.

And the longer we work with brands, learning their preferred responses, the better our deep-learning algorithm becomes at processing the thousands of comments and mentions made globally each day. That’s what we keep away from your desk – the minutiae of social media, the talent-draining slog of answering tweets, replying to comments, and deleting nastiness by the thousands.

Just because you outsource social media doesn’t mean you abandon your voice. A competent social management team makes your voice their voice. That’s ICUC’s policy. When we take you on as a client, we learn about your goals, your strategies, your voice, your identity.

Just ask our clients like Starbucks and Disney how much we understand the importance of honoring a brand’s voice.

The Momentary Business of Crisis Management

Work in any industry long enough and you realize it’s not if a crisis develops, it’s when. And if that crisis happens when your team’s in bed, you’ll be wishing you had a social media management team positioned around the globe in more than 30 languages and every time zone, because that’s what it takes to stay on top of brand-redefining crises.

Usually, though, having a round-the-clock team simply helps build better relationships, gain customer loyalty, and increase word-of-mouth. There’s nothing that wows a customer quite like lamenting a brand-related problem on Twitter, then hearing from that brand’s customer service pro within 15 minutes about solving that problem. That’s how brands bridge the gap and become a name customers trust.

Sometimes, being in the moment means spotting a terrific photo of your brand’s product shared by a customer on Instagram and being able to share that on Twitter and Instagram. It’s capitalizing on free marketing when someone posts a gorgeous shot of their Starbucks drink with a backdrop of a beautiful park on a spring day, conveying a real “lifestyle moment” of what Starbucks provides. But, second, that customer gets a momentary sense of being heard, seen, and celebrated by the brand they’ve supported for years when they’re retweeted or shared.

By being 24/7, it means more opportunities to hear and see branding moments created by the people who know your brand almost as well as you do – your loyal audience.

Let’s Be Brilliant Together

When it comes to your brand, there are so many areas of your company you need to be on top of – from logistics and distribution to accounting and scaling operations – but using pros for matters like social media management gives you more time to focus on areas where you’re the expert.

Your communications and marketing departments combined with our social media management and message-scaling know-how means your social media ambitions can be more easily realized than you ever dreamed.

With our experience gained across various industries and verticals blended with your branded messaging, we’ll reach incredible heights together.