15 Ways You Can Benefit from a Social Media Consultant

There’s a lot of talk lately about how everyone seems to be a social media expert, and the truth is…much of the conversation is correct.

How Do You Measure Social Media Expertise?

The measure of someone’s social media prowess seems to be not what they know, but how much longer they’ve been using it than everybody else. I have a problem with this, because it devalues what people like me can do for a business.

It hurts this industry when people sell themselves as consultants and then fail to produce any tangible results for a client. It also hurts when people oversell what social media can do.

I’ll give you an example. I recently worked for a client that had been told it would be possible to gain over 100k Twitter followers in a matter of 6 months, without having any new content to market.

It’s Not In The Numbers

Aside from the fact that the value of Twitter followers is in response and connection rather than numbers, listening to this client tell me that my analysis (which was closer to 3k-10k in 12 months) was off and that someone else told them that they could do better…well, it ruffled my feathers a bit. And I have thick feathers.

To make matters worse, these kinds of reactions, which are usually from clients that don’t really understand social media at all, are commonplace. No matter how many times I say that it’s not the numbers that matter, they still pay me to get them numbers.

So, although it is possible to build pure numbers to satisfy the ego and keep clients happy, I’d prefer to provide authentic results that actually benefit the company. To do that, I want to explain what a social media consultant can do for your business or branding effort.

The Truth

A social media consultant can:

1. Teach you how to listen, both to what customers are saying and to what potential clients are saying.
2. Help you build buzz around a product or idea, but cannot force something to go viral.
3. Show you how to create traffic funnels so that you can benefit from a new media presence. They can also teach you how to track what happens at each step of the way, so that you know what works, and what doesn’t.
4. Teach you how to create a blog or content marketing campaign that draws traffic to your products and/or ideas.
5. Create email newsletters so that you can capture customer emails and build a responsive customer list. We can do the same with prospects.
6. Help you create a presence on each social network so that you can be where your customers hang out.
7. Provide your company with a new image that says you are modern and that you care.
8. Build brand loyalty via communication on new media platforms.
9. Help you survey consumer and customer sentiment so that you know how to make more money.
10. Help you cut marketing costs by taking advantage of modern technology.
11. Help you sell without selling.
12. Make your company seem human.
13. Reach out to customers you would never have had access to before.
14. Make your company seem relevant.
15. Change the way that you do business.

Now, although there are many other things a social media consultant can do, many of them are either unimportant or less than useful. You want 10,000 Twitter followers? Yeah, we can probably do that, but I would rather get you 3,000 followers that respond to you and hang on your every word. Rather than get you 10,000 Facebook fans, I would rather get you 1,000 active fans that help you evangelize your brand.

I don’t like to talk about this topic often, but I felt that it had to be said. When you decide to hire a social media consultant, and I think you should seriously consider it, make sure that they can talk in a language that shows that they know what they’re talking about. If they talk about just numbers, then move on and find someone that is going to be honest with you. Yeah, the truth might hurt, but I think it’s what most businesses need to hear.

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