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You know we’re big fans of outsourcing over here on So, Here’s the Thing, but I’ve recently come across a few experiences that I want to address. While I advocate for better time management, I also want to ensure you’re handing off your work to someone who is qualified for the job.

In this episode, I’m sharing three things you should consider before hiring a social media manager that will be a representation of your brand! Listen in to hear why I believe this topic is important, but also what experience prompted this conversation (it involves stealing in the creative industry).

Why This Topic is Important (:35)

Three Things to Consider Before Hiring a Social Media Manager

1. Is their business reputable and experienced? (1:20)

2. Everything you put out there is a representation of your brand. (6:40)

3. Set up systems of approval for everything that gets published. (6:45)

Unpopular Opinion: Make sure you’re ready to take responsibility for anything that goes out under your brand. (8:00)

Links:
Episode 53: Inspiration vs. Stealing in the Creative Industry

Read the Transcript:

0:05
Welcome to so here’s the thing where we share candid conversations that lift the veil on what it takes to find success, even if that means sharing a few unpopular opinions. I’m your host Laylee Emadi, grab some coffee or cocktail, and let’s get real.

0:21
Hey, friends, welcome to this week’s episode, this is going to be a super bite size topic, but a very important one as well, we are going to be talking about three things to consider before bringing on a social media manager. And there’s a couple of reasons I want to talk about this with you guys this week, one of which is I had a very interesting experience. It’s not a unique experience in any way. However, I’m going to tell you guys the story behind that personal experience that I had on Instagram. And the second reason is that as much as I advocate for people outsourcing, this is one of the number one things people ask me about is, can I outsource my social media and if so how, because I’ve got this love hate relationship with Instagram with social media. And I just want to get it off my plate, I totally understand that desire.

1:10
And I want to address it here because I do think that there’s a way to do it. But again, I think there are a few things you need to consider before bringing someone in to take this off your plate. So let’s go ahead and dive in.

1:21
The first thing I want you to consider before bringing in a social media manager or whatever you want to call this person who’s going to be basically handling your social media for you and your company. This sounds really obvious, but I want to point it out. Because a lot of times we hire professionals or people who claim to be professional, and we just kind of throw our trust toward them. But I really want you to think about if you actually trust them, and you’re really clear in the parameters that you’re wanting them to follow. Right off the bat, do they have a reputable business? Or is this kind of like their first shot at taking on a social media account and running with it, those two things kind of require different levels of hands on attention from you. If it’s a reputable business, who is really big expert in social media, they might not need as much hand holding. But if this is their first time trying something out for you, maybe they’re a VA, maybe they’re just your assistant, and you’re trying to give them a chance at trying their hand at your social media, that’s going to require a little bit more hands on attention. So being able to be really clear about if you actually trust the person that you’re hiring on, or are you doing this kind of knowing that you’re going to give it a little bit of a chance, but it’s going to take a little bit more attention from you, because you’re not 100% sure if you trust these people or not, that leads me to the second thing you want to consider. You really want to remember that your name and that your face are still attached to every single post that goes out on social media. This is not your average to do list item that you can just check off and move on from without checking in on the person who has taken it over.

3:01
Again, I am a huge advocate for outsourcing. I do believe in growing your team and bringing team members on that can clear the clutter from your desk from your to do list so that you can focus on the things that only you can do. But for me personally, I feel that only I can be the one that shows up on social media. I’m the only person who I trust right now. And then I’m not saying this will never change. But as of right now, I’m the only person that I fully trust to attach my name and face to words that go out into the internet. Because once they are out there, my friends, you can never get them back. I sound like myself when I was teaching high school and talking to my high schoolers about this. But it’s 100% true. When something is put out there. It’s really difficult to backtrack. And I’m going to tell you a little story right now about why I chose to talk about this this week. So of course aside from people asking me about this topic, recently, I happened to stumble upon a quote of mine that was plagiarized and repost it on Instagram. Now I am by no means somebody who sits here and thinks that I created every quote 100% uniquely. We have done episodes on stealing in the creative industry here on the podcast with the legal page with Natalie Frank, with Don Richardson of tech savvy, creative, we’ve had that conversation. And we’ve kind of come to the realization of knowing that we are not, you know, inventing the wheel here, people are really just kind of taking ideas running with them putting their own personal spin on them. So I’m going to put that out there. Just kind of as a preface to the story. However, in this situation, I found the post that was plagiarized because they also copy and pasted my hashtag list including hashtags that are particularly created for my products. So my own private community has a hashtag and only people inside the community use that hashtag which is how I found the post that was taking out of context that I had written and was basically remade for the person that posted it. So I did the thing that I would advise anybody to do. And I reached out to that creator on Instagram, and I said, Hey, I love that you’ve taken inspiration from me, I would appreciate proper credit. And in the future, you may want to kind of reach out before doing this because it looks like plagiarism. And their response to me was very kind. But it was also a response that really sparked this idea of having this conversation with you guys about bringing on social media managers, because that creator told me, I actually just hired a social media manager, I don’t create my posts anymore. My social media manager does. So she took your post, stole it, put my name on it, and posted it. And so that’s why I want to bring this up today for you to remember that, although I completely understand that sometimes social media managers can get here to weigh in, maybe they’re not putting 100% of unique ideas into things. But that creators name and face was still attached to the post that was stolen from me.

6:06
So another good example of this are really big names out there, like Rachel Hollis, who has in the past, blamed her social media management or her social media team members on, you know, really inappropriate posts that have gone out or things that have not been met with a lot of applause and have been met with a lot of controversy. blaming your team members will only get you so far, you’ve got to remember, and I’m gonna keep saying this, I’m going to sound like a broken record. But you’ve got to remember that your name and face are still attached to everything that we’re putting out there. So that is point number two is just remembering that everything you put out there is still attached to you and your brand.

6:44
And the third thing I want you to consider before bringing in a social media manager is actually more of an action item. And that is setting up systems of approval to make sure that you’re approving anything that gets put out there. This kind of goes hand in hand with point number two, in that you’re really going to want to take a proactive approach to adding somebody in to help you with social media. So an example of this would be creating an Asana board or Trello board where your social media manager can plan the posts ahead of time. And maybe once every few weeks, you can go in and approve the posts that are being made and posted with your name and face attached to them. So I don’t really advocate for micromanaging in your business, especially when you add in team members who you trust who you respect, who you love working with. But in the beginning, especially, I think it’s really important to have your hands on these things as they prepare to go out again, with your brand with your name attached to them especially. So hopefully this will help give you an action item and a place to start especially if you do really want to start outsourcing social media. I know not everybody loves being on Instagram. Not everybody loves being on social media all of the time. And it is something that you can definitely outsource. But I think it’s so important to outsource it well, at the end of the day to make sure that you’re really and this is probably my unpopular opinion that you’re really prepared to take responsibility for anything that goes out under your brand. So whether it’s a you pressing post or a social media manager, pressing post, it all kind of does fall on you. So I hope this helps and I will see you guys on the next episode.

8:21
For show notes and resources mentioned on today’s episode head to soheresthethingpodcast.com and if you’re enjoying the podcast, I’d love to read your review on iTunes. Thanks so much for listening and I’ll catch you in the next episode.