Hire Both – a content creator and social media manager
That is the smart answer and if you’re short of time you need to read no further.
Just get in touch at alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk and we’ll sort the rest out.
If you want to read the reasoning behind “Should You Hire A Content Creator or Social Media Manager” then read on below.
Think about it this way.
Let’s just say you’re a restaurant
You have a chef who creates the dishes – let’s call them the content creator. They make the food look nice, taste nice and blow away your customers.
The chef doesn’t farm the animals, greet people at the door, take their order, take delivery orders on the phone, wait on, deliver food, design the menu, design the website, do the PR & Marketing and so on.
Content Creation and Social Media Management are very different skill sets. The latter involves building communities, engaging, marketing strategy and proving ROI.
We’ll look at what both rules do and then give you some suggestions for managing marketing on the budget
What is a content creator?
“A content creator is someone who creates entertaining or educational material to be expressed through any medium or channel. Content creation especially pertains to digital content, since that’s where the majority of content is consumed” Adobe
At it’s most basic content creators often produce the photos, videos and graphics for social media.
Often a jack of all trades for visual content, without being a specialist in one field.
When it comes to how we work at Altrincham HQ, we’ll often hire specialist photographers, videographers, graphic designers who are experts in their field – they rarely call themselves content creators.
A content creator should not be managing the day-to-day social media – they should be working with a social media manager to optimise the content
PROS OF HIRING A CONTENT CREATOR
- You’re going to get the best visual content you can
- Great photos, videos and graphics do enhance your brand
- Producing content is time consuming – so why not outsource it
- The content can be used on social media and on websites
CONS OF HIRING A CONTENT CREATOR
- It’s expensive to hire content creators for every piece of content
- A content creator is not the best person to manage the social media
- Without a social media manager the content can often go unused or not reach it’s potential
What is a social media manager?
“Typically, a Social Media Manager is the person in an organization who is trusted with monitoring, executing, filtering, and measuring the social media presence of a product, brand, corporation or even individual. A social media manager is often called the ‘voice of the company’. Digital Marketing Institute
Notice the difference in the description here for a social media manager vs content creator.
Being the voice of a company is something that should be handled by an experienced marketer.
They will define the strategy, approach and make content suggestions to the business owner / content creator based on data and experience.
And they will execute based on this.
PROS OF HIRING A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER
- Social Media starts from sound marketing strategy
- You have someone whose sole responsibility is to manage the social media
- They will analyse the data and change and adapt tactics accordingly
- A freelance social media manager will have a holistic overview of social from their own accounts and multiple clients’ accounts
- A social media manager will live and breathe social media 24/7, so will be up to date with changes and trends
CONS OF HIRING A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER
- They are not always the best person to produce the visual content
- A social media manager can only deliver the best results if the client is open to ideas
- A freelance social media manager won’t be on sight every day – so need support from the team
Now you know about each specific job role, do any of these scenarios sound familiar
SCENARIO 1
You’ve hired a content creation team who have said they can also manage the social media.
The photos and videos are absolutely amazing. A lot better than the wonky Iphone photos you were taking before they came on board. And the bonus is they’re not charging that much extra for the social media management side of the business.
They’ve been working with you for 3 months and you’re surprised to see that followers aren’t growing and engagement is low across the board.
It’s almost as if nobody cares about what you’re posting on social media.
Everything is pretty, but it’s not driving business
Solution: We come across this a lot. The content quality standards are high for a lot of businesses these days, which means the way to break through the noise is engaging copy (words) and engaging content + community. Pretty alone doesn’t sell.
You need to knock the cheap social media management on the head and bring in a social media manager to bring strategy to the table.
They’ll be able to look at the account, ask the right questions and bring community to the table.
It’s a time investment. When it comes to social media it’s the community building which takes more time than the act of posting on social media.
SCENARIO 2
You have a social media manager, which you hired because of their reputation.
They sat down with you, found out about the business and then put the proposal forward for what they need on social media.
It sounded great and you went with it, but since they started it’s not working out as planned.
You haven’t been able to provide the content they asked for and the social media posts aren’t as good as expected.
The contract is up in a few months and you’re thinking of stopping – but then you know social media will go silent and the business will suffer.
What do I do?
Solution: Go back to the start. Why did you hire them and were you happy with what they suggested?
And then find a way of making that happen. You hired them for their expertise.
If the social media manager has driven results for others, you know they’re good at what they do.
Find the resources for content, which can either be someone in house takes responsibility for content production or you hire someone in.
Ask the social media manager for recommendations as they’ll have a black book of contacts they work well with.
SCENARIO 3
We’re a B2B business and we have so much content we don’t know what to do with it
We have a couple of blogs a week, lots of events with galleries of professional photos and we’re in the press on a regular basis.
Our social media is terrible though.
We post about once a week as a company and very few people respond to it.
And even though we have dozens of staff – the only time they post on social media is when they leave the company.
Where do we start?
Solution: You need to do 2 things here.
Bring in a social media manager to turn all that content into sales and new leads.
So many businesses would love to be in the position of having all that content.
And once the content is hitting the spot in 2-3 months then roll out a social media training programme for all relevant staff members.
Employees typically have 10x the social reach of a company page, so those 2 combined will be a powerhouse.
SCENARIO 4
We’ve had a young company approach us.
We’re not posting on social media at all and they’ve come in and told us we need to be on TikTok and doing Instagram Reels.
We’ve heard of both of the platforms and assume they’re for younger people rather than our core audience which is 35-50 year olds.
We’d have said no outright, but as they’re starting out, they’re charging a ridiculously small monthly fee. It almost feels wrong to say yes as it sounds like less than minimum wage to hire them.
Solution: We’d need to drill down more into your business to give a full answer.
But from what you’ve said about your audience it seems like Facebook is a more natural fit than TikTok.
Businesses can’t be on every platform and the answer I’m giving is relevant to November 2022 – the answer could be very different in 12/18 months – but more of your audience will be on Facebook than TikTok.
Ask them to provide a compelling reason for you to be on TikTok right now and see how they answer.
I do like the fact they’ve got you thinking about social media though.
It’s important for your business, so you do need to take social media seriously.
SCENARIO 5
We’re a small business.
I don’t think we have the budget for a content creator or a social media manager.
Times are tough right now, but we need to market our business to get more customers.
I’m lost – is there another option for businesses on a micro budget
Solution: This is what we recommend.
If you haven’t got the money, you need to invest the time.
Social Media Training is a really cost-effective way to do this. Book a day or a half day on a social media training session.
And then put the hours in implementing everything.
Don’t expect results overnight, but you will start seeing results with time.
And then in maybe 12 months those results will allow you do budget for outsourcing your social media.
CONCLUSION
The scenarios above should give you a fairly good idea of where you’re at
To further understand where you’re weaknesses lie, rate yourself out of 10 for the following areas
0 being the lowest and 10 being the highest score
Understanding Of Platform
Follower Growth
Idea Generation
Quality Of Content
Consistency / Frequency
Engagement
Analytics
Sales
Do you need to just improve on Quality Of Content or is it all areas above?
That will tell you whether you need a content creator or social media manager or both.
NEED HELP WITH SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Chat to us about Social Media Marketing for YOUR organisation , so we can better understand YOU and what will grow your organisation
We can chat about whether online or Face 2 Face is better for you
We can only find out what is unique to your business by chatting with you
Look at our Social Media Training and Social Media Management services
We offer Social Media Training on
* LinkedIn
* Instagram
* Facebook
* TikTok / Instagram Reels
* Twitter
* Blogging
We can do this
* 121
* Corporate Workshops
* Group Workshops
* Face to Face or Via Zoom / Skype
Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
