For social media consultants, time is money. They have a certain amount of hours every day to make money. Once that time is gone, so is that money that time could have brought. So if you think your social media consultant is a little obsessed with the amount of time they spend with you, you would be correct. They’re obsessed with maximizing what they can do with you in your contracted amount of time and sticking to that contracted amount of time.

Some consultants tell their clients they will work with them for an allotted amount of time every month. I don’t like doing that. It makes clients think they need to eat up that time every month and that can hamper what we can do. Plus some months need to go way over the amount of time I have budgeted for them, so I like to have clients pay every month for the average number of hours they receive over the course of a year. It’s better for both sides.

But no matter how it’s done, each client has a number of hours where they can work with their consultant. And many whittle away those hours not realizing what they’re doing. They’re cutting into the possibilities of what can be done on social media with no idea of what they have done.

Think you might be doing that? Let’s take a look at how you can maximize that time.

Not looking at your social media accounts

This happens so frequently, and it always shocks me. A lot of clients just don’t bother to look at their social media accounts, so they have no idea what’s going on. And I don’t mean looking at them in-depth. I mean, they don’t even give them a cursory glance. Ever.

What ends up happening is that I get a lot of emails like, “Have you posted X?” I scratch my head because I did post about X. It was in their editorial calendar that they reviewed, and the post is currently up on their account. A quick look for this information could get them all that they need to know. Instead, they use our time together to ask me to send links and screenshots.

While this doesn’t eat up a lot of time, when you’re trying to maximize your time with a consultant, this is an easy way to eat up your time and not get the most out of your consultant. And it adds up quick if you’re asking this multiple times per week (trust me, this happens).

Multiple people managing the consultant

I do have a rule with my clients that they have one person who is my main contact to their organization. Every once in awhile though, someone will start sneaking in. Inevitably, they’re not as versed about the social media program, but that does not stop them from trying to give their opinions. Or worse, they’re trying to work around my contact to get things on the calendar.

What ends up happening when I have two different people as spokespeople for an organization? I hear two different things with no idea what is correct. So we have to spend time undoing the confusion and figuring out what our real priorities are. It gets super murky fast when two people are involved in the day-to-day.

Does that mean I’m advising that only one person can work on the social media strategy? Absolutely not. I typically have my client contact and their boss working with me. Sometimes there is another person or two in there as well. But those extra people and the boss are working on the higher level strategy. The client contact is the one giving me information for the day-to-day content. It’s so much quicker if I have one person working with me on one clear plan, rather than fielding phone calls from development, programs, etc. and trying to figure out if what they’re telling me is correct.

Not approving content in a timely manner

I once had a client who would get their content a week at a time (like all of my clients). They wouldn’t look at more than a day at a time. So every day, I would email first thing in the morning and then multiple times throughout the day asking if the content was approved yet. Every. Day. And some days this would end with them scrapping social media altogether. It made it hard to do anything else simply because it was eating most of my time with them.

Don’t make your social media consultant chase after you. Get approvals to them in a timely manner and they will have more time to do other things for you. Otherwise, you just may be paying for them to continually email you to remind you to do what you need to do. That’s not the greatest use of money.

This blog post could go on endlessly. But overall, if you avoid doing these things, you should get your money’s worth when you are working with a consultant. And if you can’t avoid doing these things, just remember that you won’t get your consultant’s best work. They simply won’t have the time to bring it to you.

How are you maximizing your time with your social media consultant?