Hiring A Professional Social Media Consultant

Social media is more than just one more new method of marketing or advertising online. Social media is a living, breathing, growing organism, and it is based in communities. The fact is, if you're not active in this growing industry, you will be left behind. People are talking about you, whether you're present in those discussions or not.

You can't keep sending out one-way communications in this new business environment. People no longer trust advertising; people trust people. Consumers trust their peers' opinions. So you have to make personal connections.


Social media is about listening to the communities you serve. It is about establishing a rapport with your target audience. Seeking out influencers in your market. And more importantly, not looking at it as a market, but as a community made up of individuals. This isn't one-way PR communications, it's a dialogue--a conversation.

Unfortunately you can't simply build a great blog and expect people to show up. The website itself is only about 20% of the work-there's still a long laundry list of things you'll still need to do to be successful. Many people don't realize the hard work required when they first take their business online--but proper developers and consultants do much more than just give you a front-end web design--they'll provide their expertise when you have questions, coaching through your learning process, promotion of your campaigns, help with your market research and search engine optimization, help measuring the effectiveness of your efforts, and hopefully access to the right connections within their networks.

A good social media consultant pulls some weight online and understands how your community will respond negatively or positively to different tactics . He'll be honest with you when he knows you need to invest some extra work to create a great product. You deserve that, because a great product hardly needs promoting.

With the right consultant, you can set goals, you can learn how to develop your voice and communicate through social media in a personable way, you can identify and establish relationships with the right people in your niche , and you can learn how to use the web as a listening tool and a research tool to understand your market and give your followers what they want.

More importantly, having a consultant who is experienced as a blogger and social media user on your side will help you avoid the pitfalls . The "blogosphere" community is self-policing and sometimes unforgiving. If you don't engage the community properly you may risk a huge loss of rapport. A social media consultant can help you present yourself and your company effectively and transparently. A good social media consultant is someone who has a great reputation in the online community; others speak of him well and trust his opinion; the things he shares are valued in the community, and he thus can provide tremendous value to the clients he represents.

A social media professional will use all the online tools available to spread the word about the organizations or campaigns he represents-much like traditional PR. But, compared with many traditional media, social media marketing is a strong and cost-effective tactic to compliment your other marketing efforts.

Cody McGibbin, contributing writer at SocialMediaMarking.com, is a nomadic entrepreneur & lifestyle designer who helps social changemakers & other remarkable people spread their message on the web.