Social media can be a huge time commitment, and continually creating fresh content for social media can be not only time consuming but very difficult in the creative sense as well. So it’s no wonder that many small businesses want to outsource their content creation. However, It’s not something I do, for two reasons.
Firstly, and most importantly to me: I strongly believe that social content designed to show your expertise should have been created by you, not just proofread by you. So while I’m happy to edit content, and put a string of thoughts into sentence, or paragraph or article. I don’t feel that researching the content then writing something up based on a vague guideline by from a client is particularly ethical. That said, it’s my opinion only and you need to decide how you feel about it yourself.
Secondly: I figure that if you’re going to pay someone to create content, you should pay a little more and use a copywriter who can make sure the content is not only well written, but also written to help searchers find it. A copywriter knows how to make content inviting to search engines without making damaging errors like keyword stacking.
It’s the same with interactions on your Facebook page. I help a number of clients out with their Facebook page and I happily do things like scheduling posts, monitoring discussions and responding to simple queries (what times are you open, how do I join) but I don’t present as the voice of the company. By far the most successful of my clients use their own voice – and it’s obvious to people that they are talking to someone who is an expert in the industry AND the business. It also gives the companies a more consistent presence across all areas of client contact.
There is a local business who has a great Facebook page – whoever runs it is friendly, helpful and gets the right mix of social and business. It’s so good, that despite having a great supplier already, I went into their store recently just to see what I was missing. While there, I mentioned to the owner that I loved their Facebook page.
Her response? “Huh!” I’m not sure whether it was a “Huh? We have a Facebook page”, or a “Huh? I’m surprised anyone noticed”, but it came across as a “Huh! I don’t care”.
Needless to say, I’ve gone back to my old supplier – they don’t have a Facebook page and they’re a little more expensive, but they’re really nice and their quality is great.
There are many ways a Virtual Assistant can help with content creation. They can research, find images, edit, upload, tag, publicize, share, monitor and respond. When it comes down to the actual creation of content, as far as I’m concerned, that’s up to you.
So what about you? Do you create your own content? Use a copywriter? Or even use an overseas article farm or offshore writer? Does it work for you? Alternatively, how do you feel when you find out someone is not creating their own content or running their own social media accounts? Let me know in the comments.
