It’s not rare that I have a client come to me with wildly inappropriate goals for our work together. I don’t know if they think a social media consultant is a magician. But if I can’t manage those expectations, it’s honestly best for all of us to move on.

So if you’re looking to hire a social media consultant for the first time and you don’t want them to run away screaming from you, let’s talk about what they can’t do for you.

Going viral

I don’t know why this keeps coming up, but it does. A client comes into a meeting and asks how I am going to make them viral. The answer is that I won’t. That will never be a goal of mine. Because my ultimate goal is to get you more business.

Going viral tends to get you more headaches without much new business. Why is that? Your content is going everywhere, and if it’s content is designed to go viral, it tends to be more for a general audience rather than your particular audience. And if you’re saying right now, “That’s great! My audience is everyone,” oh boy do we need to talk.

Your audience isn’t everyone. There are some people who are more willing to buy from you than others. Yes, there are outliers, but for the most part, your audience is made up of similar people with some similar needs and wants. Figuring those out and delivering content that shows how you fulfill those needs and wants can help them decide to go from prospective buyer to rabid enthusiast (I’ve taken loads of people on this ride with content and it’s cool). And that can have significant long-term effects for you bottom line.

On the other hand, if you are trying to create viral content that appeals to everyone, a few things can happen. Audiences can sniff out something that is not authentic, and it will completely flop. It will just be so lukewarm because it’s trying to please everyone that not even your audience will see it as something that gets them to buy into your product or organization.

Or it does go viral. Maybe for the right or maybe for the wrong reasons. Either way, you’re going to have to spend significant man hours on the extra load of community management work. And the likelihood of it converting to buyers? Not all that great, especially if they are just seeing you for the first time. You really have to build trust to get that buy-in. So you get into a cycle of trying to go viral, putting too many man hours in and not getting enough sales to justify it. Frankly, I’d quit social media at this point as well.

I can’t promise you you’ll go viral (and frankly, you need to run if a social media consultant makes this promise). But I can promise that I will create content that appeals to an audience of buyers and to turn those buyers into your best advocates. And you won’t need to be online around the clock to do that.

Online constantly

I once had a client who liked to contact me at all hours of the day because they decided I was online all hours of the day for their social media. And after I tried to nip it, it got worse. Long story short, I fired this client, and it takes a whole lot for me to fire a client.

A social media consultant who is online constantly is not someone who is working effectively for you. They are just someone with an addiction, and it will likely become a problem for your content eventually. Why? Because the further they drift from real life, the harder time they will have with understanding real people. And if they can’t understand real people, they can’t create content for them in a way that inspires action. It just becomes impossible.

On the other hand, I take frequent breaks. I make sure that I’m constantly having interactions with people in real life. I make sure my brain gets some off-times, so that I can be more creative. Basically, I’m proactively taking care of myself so that I can work more effectively for my clients. The last thing you want answering your fan messages and comments is a burnt out social media consultant who has no foot in reality. So I make sure I get all the rest I need to not be that person.

Any great social media consultant will do this. Life is long and this is a great career. It only takes one remark to end that career and your reputation with fans. Making sure you social media consultant is getting offline and taking care of themself is an investment in your social media presence.

Tech support

This one always makes me laugh. I’ll have a client call me to ask me how to make their tech work. The fact that I have never said, “Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s,” to these people is amazing. Probably because I don’t want to be fired.

Look, I don’t know much about tech. Yes, I can make it do wonderful things and create content out of thin hair with my tech. But when it breaks, I swear and then turn it on and off. And then I pray hard that it will work after that. Because I do not have time for a complete tech meltdown. If turning it off and on does not work, then I’m calling someone else. It’ll be a whole lot faster with fewer headaches if I just call someone else.

So know that if you’re calling me for your tech support, I’m just going to tell you to turn it off and on. Beyond that, you’re gonna have to call someone else. And this is pretty much what any social media consultant will tell you.