Marketers increasingly outsourcing social media

The number of marketers that are outsourcing key social media activities has doubled over the last year, with design and development the most likely tasks to be handed over to a third party.

According to a survey undertaken among 3,342 marketers by online magazine Social Media Examiner, some 28% are now outsourcing their social marketing efforts, up from 14% in 2010.

The most popular jobs to be put out-of-house are design and development at 17%, although the figure rises to 32% among those that have three years or more experience of the channel. Next on the list are content creation and analytics respectively at 10%.

The findings appear to indicate that businesses are happy to ignore some high-profile disasters involving the outsourcing of social media functions.

Speaking recently, social media guru Brian Solis also cast doubt on the wisdom of outsourcing social media to a third party. "Execution, in terms of design, in terms of day-to-day development of app, or content, that is moot – that can be handled inside or outside," he said in an interview on MyCustomer.com. "But really you need somebody who is going to be a champion and a lot of times that champion is within the organisation, because anything else is just a representative in a new channel - and that is not going to sway me to connect with you on a social network."

More...