Social Media Hiring – Employee or Consultant, What’s the Difference

I am both blessed and excited about the work I do as a social media professional. My experience includes working with businesses as a consultant/business owner in an outsourced model and now I work within an organization as an employee who is responsible for social media.

So what’s the difference? As an internal employee…

1. I’m closer with the company, which allows me to better understand how social media will impact overall needs
2. I can better gauge and impact company messaging
3. I have better access to decision makers and more opportunities to impact other areas of the organization
4. I’m less isolated from daily activities that provide opportunities to create social content
5. Access to information and content is more timely and detailed
6. I have stronger relationships with employees who tend to be the primary project owners
7. I’m able to impact strategy that goes beyond social media and reaches into other critical areas such as Communication, HR, Marketing, etc
8. Access to partner with other departments within the organization for a more cohesive social media implementation
9. Adoption rate is better but speed of implementation appears to be about the same
10. Selling the idea of “social media” is no longer required
11. Trust comes more quickly

As a consultant you are able to work with an organization effectively to strategize and implement social media but there are many lost opportunities because you’re not in on the daily.

More importantly, if the organization is large as a consultant much of your work will be isolated into one area with limited ability to spread across the organization.

And finally, there are two parts to any effort the strategy or plan and the implementation. If the organization has no one to implement the strategy the importance of the effort is lost.

There is room for both options but having done both I’m putting my money on the internal employee model as the optimum way for businesses to go.

Share your thoughts and experiences.

Why have I not blogged, what’s holding me back? Finally I have discovered the truth, the confession is “I’m Opinionated” and can come across rather confident (arrogant).

I didn’t want a blog that offended people and I didn’t want to share the same ole information, so I’ve struggled to find my voice in a setting where I feel most comfortable. Now how ironic is that, how does that work exactly.

I comfortable in the social network space, confident in my knowledge and frankly my work speaks’ for itself. Yet, I have struggled with blogging for more than 2 years now. So I’ve decided it’s time to get real, and do me, and not worry about the rest.

So consider this my launching post and I hope you’ll stay tuned because this blog about social media will be all truth and practice. Not the rhetoric, not the polish, just the real deal on what and why social media works.

And from time to time, I may slip in a few rants or two just for entertainment. Stay tuned!

According to Wikipedia, “a strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.” And, according to dictionary.com strategy is “a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result.”

So why not have a strategy for the use and implementation of social media? If you operate a business, have a family or even just living you function within some form of a strategy. We all give thought to what we do and why we’re doing it. In some cases we will shoot then aim and in other cases we have a strategy where we aim then shoot.

Social media is no different and should be strategized as to what role it will play in your business. Give it some thought, know what you want to achieve and how you plan to accomplish it. Your social media activities will be no less cool because you decided to function from a strategy rather than not.

In fact, you may be surprised at the results. Taking time to brainstorm ideas, understand your KPI’s (key performance indicators), reviewing previous marketing and/or communication efforts and knowing how social media will integrate within that  mix will lead to better business results.

As this point you have a full picture, a road map of sorts, no wait a STRATEGY that you can create and implement from allowing you to make better business decisions for future efforts. So I say, don’t be afraid of the strategy!

I look forward to your comments…

Monique