If you are asking yourself this question, it’s probably way past time that you hire a social media consultant. But let’s pretend that’s not the case.

Like hiring for any position in your organization, it’s hard to decide if it’s time. Maybe you should just train someone to do it and hope for the best? Or maybe it’s not all that important in the first place? There’s always a lot of gray area to wade through and figure out as you are pondering this question.

So let’s take a look at a few signs that probably confirm it is in fact time to hire a social media consultant.

You are irregularly posting to social media

When there is constant work, something is going to slip through. And for a lot of organizations, the easiest task to let slip through the cracks is social media. So days may go by with a single post, and you can’t get yourself to a point where you are maintaining a consistent presence.

This can also take a different form. You are only posting breaking news and events, so you only post when one of those things happen. And that can leave periods of time where nothing gets posted, simply because you don’t know what else to post.

A social media consultant can bring consistency to an organization. Having a single focus on social media, they can make sure that you are getting your audience the information they need. And they can fill in those posts that are needed between breaking news and event posts. Those are required to build an audience that is regularly checking in with what your organization is doing. Building that audience will get more eyes on the most important posts.

Analytics going down

Social media algorithms change and they change fast. So if you keep posting the same thing you did ten years ago, your analytics are probably taking a nosedive.

Another issue related to this could be that you don’t know where to find your analytics or how to interpret what they’re telling you. Not looking at that information and taking action on what it is telling you can severely limit the amount of people your posts reach.

A social media consultant can keep up with those social media algorithm changes as they occur and redirect your content in a way that will keep eyes on your posts. A good one will not do it in a way that constantly chases those views, but rather, build those views around an audience that will help you accomplish real business objectives.

This is such an important part of social media that if you are ignoring analytics or not interpreting them correctly, it will eventually tank your entire social media program. That will either happen by not getting your audience the content they want and will react to or it will make people in your organization think that social media is not worth it. That will cut the organization off from the significant amount of good social media can do.

Audience isn’t taking action

You could be competent in social media, but if you’re audience is not taking action on your posts, then it doesn’t matter. You are simply missing out on the social aspects of social media.

What do I mean by action? You provide social media toolboxes, and no one posts anything from it. There are no shares on your posts. You post a volunteer opportunity, and you don’t get any volunteers. I could go on and on. Basically, when you need your audience to do something, they won’t do it.

A social media consultant knows how to build trust with an audience. They know how to use that trust and just how much you can use it before you have to build again. It’s a delicate dance that can help you get more out of your audience. And not many people know how to do it effectively. A good social media consultant has done it countless times and can figure out the right way to do it with your audience.

You don’t know why you’re posting

You’re posting breaking news. You’re posting events. And you’re even filling in content between those. But if someone were to ask you about the strategy behind it, you wouldn’t have much to say. Maybe you’d talk about keeping up with trends. Or maybe you’d even go so far as to say your audience like this kind of content. But it won’t go much deeper than that.

A social media consultant will pull your business goals, your audience’s interests, analytics and various other pieces of information. They will turn all of that information into actual strategy with the kinds of content you should be posting and how to do that. Instead of having social media act in a silo that might work towards the organization’s goals, it instead contributes in a meaningful way. And they can point to the reasoning behind every move they make, which can help make higher ups happy as things pop up.

You have too much to do

This is probably the most straightforward reason of them all and the most likely reason why someone will hire me: There is so much to do that you don’t know where to move. You can’t prioritize because everything is priority. So you constantly try to make a dent every day. Yet you come back to an ever-growing to-do list that is showing no sign of stopping.

The easiest option is to hire an expert that you can give a big task to. You won’t be able to completely step away from social media. But a great social media consultant can help with marketing as a whole. Research you might not have done will be done. Pieces can be put together instead of continuing to leave them scattered. And you can figure out how to move forward. That can be huge when you’re feeling overwhelmed with all that needs to be done. You might even be able to get your to-do task better prioritized based on that information.

What was your sign that you needed to hire a social media consultant?