RECONSIDER OUTSOURCING IF YOU'RE A SERVICE BUSINESS

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/44313045@N08/6290270129/

As a service business owner, especially a solo, micro, or small service business owner, you are busy. Swamped. You barely have enough time to perform your service, let alone do your own clerical tasks and marketing. So you hire someone to do it for you. Outsourcing work that drains you or is a weakness for you is a great idea in almost every aspect of your business, except for at least one: writing your social media posts.

There are so many different ways for small service businesses to get involved in social media, it can be overwhelming. You may find yourself thinking that there is no way on this Earth you could possibly have enough time to do all of this social media marketing adequately. And you'd be right. So don't. Don't try to be active on every social media platform. Instead, pick a few on which to focus. If you're totally new to social media for your business, pick one to start with, get really good at it, and then add another outlet.

You may be tempted to outsource your social media marketing; although it might be a good idea to get some help with your planning and strategizing for social media, I believe it is not a good idea to outsource the actual posting or writing. If you are a service business, your business is essentially all you. To attract, gain, and keep clients, you need to build a relationship with them through trust and mutual connections. To do this, you need to be genuine and authentic; i.e. you need to be yourself. If someone else is posting on your social media outlets for you, you are not being yourself, so any trust or connection you build will be false. Besides, how embarrassing would it be to have someone comment on something you posted when they see you in person, but you have no idea what they're talking about?

Outsource your taxes, your bookkeeping, your office cleaning, and even your website building, but try to avoid outsourcing writing your social media posts. It's better to be small and authentic in social media than to be prolific but fake.

Happy Socializing!
-The Wordsy Woman

PUT YOURSELF IN THEIR SHOES

If you are a small business owner or small proprietor or freelancer trying to decide what words you should use to promote or market your business, change your shoes. Rather than being the service or product provider, put yourself in the role of customer. Visit an independent bookstore, buy a cake from a local bakery, hire a contractor, or find a real job or product you need which you may normally take care of on your own but hire it done or buy it somewhere else. And then use what you learn in your promotion and marketing.

In addition to the obvious of paying attention to how your competitor actually performs the work or to the quality and price of his or her product, concentrate on the whole process. How were you treated? How did you feel? What bugged you about the process? Was there not enough communication or too much? What made you a little nervous? What were your biggest concerns – that it be done on time, that the price was right, or that the quality was good enough? Would you have liked more personal advice or connection? What satisfied you? What could have been done better?

Use your observations and answers to these questions to amp up your competitive advantage. Can you incorporate any positive aspects of the experience into your own way of doing business? Avoid repeating the negative aspects of the experience in your own business dealings. For example, did you wish you would’ve received more status updates on work progress? If so, make sure you are providing adequate updates to your customers. If you’re not sure how many updates your customers want, ask them. After all, meeting customer needs is one of the objectives of doing business under the goal umbrella of making a profit.

Want more Wordsy Woman tips about marketing, click here and request my free publication, 10 Tips for Reaching Today's Consumers.