There are three digital marketing tasks that I will not do. They are: web design, organic social, and graphic design. In this blog, I will discuss my outlook on organic social media management and why I do not perform this work.
1) Lack of Evolution
Organic social posts haven’t really changed. There’s shortform on Twitter, graphic on Instagram, video on a few platforms, professional or B2B on LinkedIn, and so on. With personal and professional growth being key objectives, organic social content doesn’t align with these goals. Some people are happy with what is comfortable and consistent, but that isn’t me.
2) Lack of Returns
Years ago, it seemed the media was obsessed with determining the value of a like or a follow. I would argue that this exercise was moot. In reality, the value of a like or follow can be answered in two simple words that present a complex strategic initiative: remarketing lists. Your likes and follows are your most engaged clients and patrons. The purpose of collecting likes should ultimately be to grow your remarketing list and generate revenue from those that spend the most with your business. I don’t need to manage your organic social to drive revenue through this tactic. Organic social media has never created a positive ROI in and of itself for any company I have ever worked with. Providing value can mean many things, but the nature of my business is that it provides significant financial returns that are directly attributed to my actions. Organic social media content does not meet that requirement.
3) Commoditized
Everybody knows how to post on social media. Everyone knows how to repost, share, like, and comment. The running joke in the digital world is that you should hire a college student for a summer and have them manage your social accounts. I enjoy being challenged and when something has a low barrier to entry, the number of challenges with that activity become increasingly rare.
4) Expense
It should be dirt cheap to have someone manage your organic social accounts. It wouldn’t make sense to have me manage those accounts for you when you can hire someone who attends the local university… and frankly, it’s a great way to give a 20-year old some early exposure to the business world. I don’t want to take that away from them, and I don’t want to blow up your budget.
It is vitally important to remember that paid social and organic social are not the same thing. Paid social includes running ads on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. It does NOT include paying to boost organic posts. This will not provide you a return. I choose to focus on the paid side of social media, because it is an extremely profitable and complex strategic initiative. Prior to launching ads on a social channel, you do need to have an account. You also need to set up tagging to track your conversions, generally with what is called a “pixel.” This snippet also needs to be customized to your unique situation. Social media managers can’t take care of that and normally outsource this to a developer. But social media managers are also not equipped to target your audience correctly or set up your ad campaigns properly. Rather than consulting with a developer and then having someone else set up and manage the ads, I can take care of all of that for you. You’ll also get a much more useful and actionable report from me on paid social than you can get for organic social, simply due to its nature.
Don’t hear what I’m not saying. Social media is important. It just doesn’t provide the returns that other digital tactics do, and my business is all about maximizing your returns. Plus, ‘important’ doesn’t mean ‘expensive.’ If you’re looking to launch remarketing campaigns on any channel or need ad campaigns to drive more growth on your social accounts, let’s have a 30-minute chat and see if we might be a fit. Oh, and make sure you’re on the proper social channels to reach your target customer!