Laurel Papworth

At the beginning of this month, I wrote about Influencers, and what they looked like online and off. Every social network has influencers. The reason why influencers are so important is because they stop you from having to “get” to every single community member yourself. They reach out for you. Do the hard yards, as it were. Not every influencer will have the same influence. But they are important none-the-less.

It’s no surprise that there are social networks of social media people – of course there are, people congregate around issues adn subjects and values they are passionate about. And blogging and tweeting and facebooking seems to be a pretty popular subject these days. But instead of going into the influencer list in more detail, lets adapt another list – why you need a social media expert – from @mediahunter Get Sticky blog on Why You Need An SEO Expert.

Because funnily enough, the arguments that work for hiring an SEO Expert also work for hiring a Social Media Expert. And for hiring any other kind of expert in your organisation, for that matter.

So here are 6 reasons why you might need to hire a Social Media specialist:

1. You have too much to do and too little time to do it. Good social media takes time rather than $$$, is it the best use of yours?
2. A fresh set of eyes. You probably stare at your marketing and PR strategies too much as it is and are possibly now blind to potential issues. A Social Media specialist brings afresh set of eyes to your campaigns with a single-minded view to improve your community brand relations.
3. True expertise. Many people working around marketing and PR say they understand social media but to be fair in most cases their knowledge is basic and founded on their personal use of Facebook and Twitter. Social Media evolves on a daily basis and is increasingly complicated juggling may scenarios and relationships. You need a specialist who is up-to-date with the very latest social media strategies and tools and with good experience.
4. Overcome internal politics. There can be a a lot of parties with vested interests in your strategies, all clamouring for your attention or priority. A Social Media specialist can present the FACTS and an unbiased strategy to achieve everyone’s goals in the RIGHT order.
5. Education. You and your team can learn more about social media from a specialist, that will improve your knowledge and value to the organisation as well assist in communicating why and what needs to be done. A good social media specialist explains “why” and “how” as well as performing the tasks at hand.
6. Better results. Unless you are a gun at social media then a specialist will most likely produce better and faster search results than you could achieve on your own. This is good for your company and good for you. And quite a lot less risky.

If you want to see the original 6 Reasons for Hiring A SEO Expert it’s here. As a good little social media expert, I just snaffled it for myself.

What do you think? Can social media use the same rules for expert engagement that SEO does? If you hand your community over to an expert, are you losing more than you gain? What do you think?

(PS Sydney Morning Herald Social Media Breeds New Field of Experts )