Your Blogging Voice – Keep it Real

February 11, 2009 by admin1
Filed under Social Media Marketing

Leesa Barnes wrote a BLOG POST today on Why You Should Never Outsource Your Social Media Tasks & What You Should Delegate Instead. This subject is near to my heart so I have copied my response to her here.

Hi Leesa,

Thank you so much for addressing this important subject. We must be vigilant in this area or people will lose faith in the social media networks much the same way they have lost faith in TV or Radio advertising.

I am a Virtual Assistant who specializes in Social Media Marketing and I agree with you completely concerning not outsourcing the social media networking tasks that revolve around your unique voice or point of view. Social Media is built upon the principles of authenticity, transparency and relationship building. There is no way to maintain those principles and outsource your blog posts or conversational tweets.

But does that mean an entrepreneur must be bogged down by all zillions of other tasks involved with developing and maintaining a productive Social Media Strategy. I don’t think that is realistic.

For example would you or should you outsource your attendance at a large family function such as a reunion or anniversary celebration? Of course not that would be unthinkable. But could you outsource the many technical details involved such as house cleaning, grocery shopping, menu planning or invitations etc? I think everyone would agree that would be acceptable and could quite possibly make the event even better.

One of the most important skills to learn if you want to become a successful entrepreneur is how to delegate so you can concentrate on what you do best.

There are many Social networking tasks that can be outsourced to a qualified specialist that have no direct impact on the actual voice of the person who is using them such as tracking and reporting on your reputation in the blogosphere, building and maintaining business pages in Facebook, researching and identifying targeted blogs for the client to comment on etc. There are also so too many Applications and tools available for one person to investigate and test alone.

I think the consumer is very capable of figuring out which people are presenting their own authentic thoughts and experiences and which ones are delegating those important tasks to someone else. I think those that allow others to be their voice will not have a following for long.