What profession is a social media publicist type hybrid?

debsey

Wed, Aug 23 2017, 1:35 pm

Asking for a project I've been approached to help out with.

What professional would you use to both help build a website, manage a web presence, and promote a project on social media.

Would these be different people? Or is there a "one stop shop" service that would both help with the website, and social media presence, and managing income streams - for example, from webinars or a YouTube channel.

I'm not sure if what they are looking for is an "in-house" person to do this (and in that case, what would that person's title be?), or if they need some sort of consultation business to get involved.

Basically, it sounds like what they need is kind of like a publicist, but on the web.

Any input? This is way outside of my wheelhouse.

Please don't nominate anyone yet - I want information about the various options first. I may post a classified later.

debsey

Wed, Aug 23 2017, 1:37 pm

mha3484 wrote:

One stop shop. Its digital marketing. I work with someone fantastic that I am happy to recommend via PM. She works with clients across the country.

Thanks.

And that would be an outside consultant, or would they hire a "digital marketing" person as one of the positions in their company?

mha3484

Wed, Aug 23 2017, 1:41 pm

We use a consultant. She helps us with big picture stuff such as developing a full strategy and implementation plans. We just hired someone to work in house so she will train her and provide guidance at an hourly fee.

debsey

Wed, Aug 23 2017, 2:01 pm

What does this type of service cost? Is it an ala carte thing, project based, or hourly? Before I advise them to start looking down this path, I need to see if it's even anywhere remotely close to their budget.

amother

Linen

Wed, Aug 23 2017, 2:23 pm

I'm a digital marketer working in-house, where I direct a large team. You can use a web designer and digital marketer, some larger agencies will offer all of the above, while other marketers will work on a consultancy basis with the web designer and take over after the website is built. Whichever route you take, it's very important to choose wisely because there are lots of scammers and people who talk a lot and don't deliver. Unfortunately it's an industry where it's very easy to pull the wool over people's eyes so be careful.

debsey

Wed, Aug 23 2017, 3:14 pm

amother wrote:

What are the red flags they should look for? How can they separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak?

debsey

Wed, Aug 23 2017, 10:24 pm

perquacky wrote:

We have several digital marketing people on staff. I work for a large publishing house, and they need to continuously promote our books and authors.

I'm assuming that these are separate from the web designers or anyone else involved in the publishing house's social media?

perquacky

Wed, Aug 23 2017, 11:09 pm

debsey wrote:

I'm assuming that these are separate from the web designers or anyone else involved in the publishing house's social media?

Correct. Although I'm fairly certain they all work together in some way.

amother

Linen

Thu, Aug 24 2017, 8:02 am

debsey wrote:

What are the red flags they should look for? How can they separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak?

It's a bit of a loaded question but I'll do my best to answer here. You want to see a proven track record of success, and you want weekly or biweekly updates and/or monthly reports with meaningful data that the client can understand. Downloading a keyword report from Google AdWords and saying here's your performance doesn't cut it. You want to set clear benchmarks and goals from the start in terms of expected traffic, rankings, and other meaningful goals. You want the SEO to be involved with the building of the website so that it's built right from an SEO perspective. Fancy graphs are easy to generate, you/thenclient should understand all the data that you're seeing. If you'd like I can PM you with more details based on your client's needs.

TwinsMommy

Thu, Aug 24 2017, 8:38 am

as one of my businesses, I curate daily content (140 or fewer characters) and post it on twitter, linkedin, and facebook (page, not profile) for various clients. At the same time, I get them targeted followers on twitter and invite those followers to like their fb page (and link with them on linkedin). I use various methods for increasing followers quickly and utilize a lot of the tools: hootsuite, manageflitter, twellow, etc. For my bigger clients I've been doing pinterest and youtube and g+, etc.

I take over AFTER the company already has an established website. I've been doing it based on number of hours per week and my rates are as follows:

$280 a month for 2 hours a week
$360 a month for 3 hours a week
$500 a month for 5 hours a week

and I had a client who used me 8-10 hours per week so I charged him by the hour.

If you have someone well versed in web design AND social media, expect to pay more. I'm just a work at home mom who does this on the side and I don't touch websites.

debsey

Thu, Aug 24 2017, 12:21 pm

Thanks, everyone. This has been very helpful. It sounds like, to start, they need to go to one of the bigger places that does both web design and social media strategy, and then they need to re-assess once up and running.

It's interesting how the younger generation of nonprofits and service businesses think in terms of a web strategy by default, which isn't the way I necessarily approach things.