For the typical business owner, solopreneur and licensed professional who is looking to get traffic to their website and build their business with limited resources, IMO hiring a social media consultant is not the best use of financial resources. I say this because to date, I have seen no evidence or testimonials that any Local Realtor, CFP, bookkeeper, mortgage lender, massage therapist has booked any business from a social media presence. For there to be a return on any investment, there must be revenue generated.

When starting a new business or building an existing business to the next level a personal touch and connection is required. This personal connection via social media requires the person. In addition, outsourcing anything requires systems, policies and procedures to manage the vendor. The typical business owner doesn’t have these in place which means a social media consultant will be working without direction and any damage done will most likely be discovered after it’s too late to correct.

Does the CEO of a large company really chat every day with their clients? No. But other people do. You talk about social media as a friend connection base, but forget that Twitter and Facebook rank high in search. Managing your brand professionally is important so that what shows up through search from these two websites is what you want seen. A lot of small business owners just don’t have the marketing background, and some, even the sales background to do this on their own.

There is also the whole aspect of training a business owner to do all this too. I believe in the Timothy Ferris line of thinking in outsourcing what you do not have the time to do and Facebook and Twitter is perfect for that.

Also, there is a prominent popular winery in Ca where the wine maker’s social media is outsourced and no one can tell. This person is just too busy to be on social media but understand it is important to be there, so a consultant handles that beautifully for them.