Outsource Yourself
There is a growing trend in social media – outsourcing. Package deals are now a dime-a-dozen. Hire one of these supposed social media experts and they’ll take over the drudgery of creating and maintaining your presence on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Biznik. For a mere $1,000 set-up fee and $500 a month, they’ll create a profile for you, upload your photo and pertinent bio information and then, supposedly, assume your virtual persona – tweeting, and updating, and connecting with the community to establish your ‘personal brand.’ In most cases, the reality is a far cry from the promise.
There are heated conversations regarding the value of social media to business. There are even more differences in thought on the approach organizations large and small should take to establishing their online presence. Here’s a particularly informative survey of opinion. The question is particularly germane to the small business owner and entrepreneur that has a plate already overflowing with to-do lists and time demands. The option to outsource yourself must be truly appealing given the buzz about the benefits of social networking for business. But will a service provider create an authentic experience of you? Will they accurately reflect the services of your business? Can you truly outsource the relationship aspects of your interactions with others on Biznik or the other social networks, for that matter?
We’ve seen a very disturbing trend over the last several months related directly to these emerging services. User profiles are being created by individuals who are certainly NOT the individual reflected in the profile. We strongly suspect the outsourcing of social media presence to lie at the root of this pernicious situation. The typical pattern is quite consistent:
- A profile is created
- The email address of record for the account is always from a free service (Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail)
- Typical ‘About you’ language is populated usually written in the third person
- A profile photo is uploaded
- A website link to another social network is added to the profile
- The user never returns to Biznik
Following the breadcrumbs, it appears that most of these profiles are being created by ‘affiliates‘ of companies selling the social media packages described above. The affiliate is not an employee of the company. Rather, they earn a bounty on every profile they create. Indeed, many of the package vendors are beginning to behave like MLM’s offering a revolutionary business opportunity to the ‘work-from-home-and-make-millions’ crowd. They entice their unsuspecting ‘partners’ with promises of a lucrative career and then make a mint on their efforts.
The damage these denizens do to the likes of Facebook are minimal. Indeed, the LinkedIns of the world are simply rolodex like databases where the social relationship is a secondary concern. This type of profile actually supports their business model – the larger the database the more lucrative the network. However, social relationship communities, like Biznik, pay a significant and costly price. Such profiles created on this service clutter the community with dead-ends and bridges to nowhere. Given that these individuals have no intention of engaging with the community or working to support the success of other Bizniks, they serve as a significant distraction polluting the community pool with detritus. They suck resources from the community, confuse the active membership, and provide nothing in return. So, we act on your behalf.
Over the course of the last several months we’ve implemented a tidy little package of backend functionality designed to preclude many of these characters from persistently damaging the Biznik community. We are now able to block the creation of many of these profiles as patterns emerge identifying sources of bogus profiles. I’ll not get into the specifics, but rest assured, we are watching.
And you have a role to play! Each Biznik profile page has a control in the lower left hand corner of the page to ‘Flag this member’. If you see a profile created that looks particularly suspicious, flag it and we will investigate. Help us to keep the community vibrant and fresh, populated with real Bizniks interested in supporting one another to grow their businesses and make a difference. It really is about the relationship!
April 7th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Like the sounds of Nature which are rapidly fading from ear shot (either because they are being wiped out or because they are being drowned out by technology), the internet experience is becoming ever more “virtual” so it’s hard to tell the “real virtual” from the outsourced fake.
Soon we’ll have a package available where you will get your chiropractic adjustments over the phone and pay via electronic transfer – it will be easy for you because once we set it up (a small setup fee with your discounts – if you buy by…) as an automatic process and your phone will call our phone whether you are there are not: the adjustments will still work!
April 8th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
I nominate “social networking zombies” as a name for those people.
April 11th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Andrew… I have also been watching this trend from the viewpoint of my students in my “New Media Sales Process” training classes, most of which are trying to learn about how to market themselves authentically in this evolving phenomena.
My objective of training in this area is to help the small business owner understand how social media and business marketing work together and to increase sales through new relationships. Long before the internet, there has always been a very fuzzy line between business and social relationships. Which comes first and are they mutually exclusive?
Recently I even got sucked into becoming a certified social media coach, thinking that I would be increasing my knowledge and resources in order to assist my clients, only to learn that some of the techniques and practices being promoted were what I considered “black hat” methods.
I have since removed myself from their program and am in process of deleting any links or references to their services. But, as we all know, it’s tough to erase our mistakes from Internet archives.
That said, I cannot ignore the continuing remarks by my students after they learn about the amount of time commitment it takes to create real relationships that lead to clients or collaborations, thus the ability to grow their business successfully. Most respond that “they need a good administrative assistant” to be an effective marketer. That has become a growing industry of VAs, or Virtual Assistants.
Listening to the needs of these small business owners, I encourage growing businesses to hire or outsource activities that will help them market and sell their services. Every one of my successful business endeavors have included a very effective admin assistant. They managed my calendar, communications, and appointments both business and social.
For the sake of the growing small business owner that will employ legitimate and authentic assistants, please make sure your screening process does not include an arbitrary blockage without an appeal process from the business owner that is a target of a subjective “flagging”.
I also want a community “populated with real Bizniks interested in supporting one another to grow their businesses and make a difference” but please include the accused in the investigation process unless it is an apparent robot doing the posting.
Some very good people that really need the benefit of Biznik membership can easily get scammed by people offering “SEO and Social Media Expertise Services”. Let’s not banish them if they are the victim rather than the one who perpetuates this practice. Let’s educate them instead.
Thanks for letting me share my viewpoint and I thank you and Biznik for all that you do providing the world’s best small business social media network platform. …Howard
April 13th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
I’ve never heard of this. I’d much rather maintain my own profiles.
April 18th, 2010 at 1:32 am
Andrew, thank you for continuing to make Biznik a safe, trustworthy place where we can build our business relationships!
April 26th, 2010 at 8:38 am
Thanks Andrew, When I saw the title, I thought this was yet another blog advising on how to outsource etc, how wrong I was !, never knew there was this sort of outsourcing going on within social media. Please keep us updated on the detection techniques that you deploy.
May 7th, 2010 at 4:47 am
There are some people that I follow on-line at various sites of which I suspect someone in/on said person organization or staff is maintaining their on-line presence. I guess that’s the price of being too BIG or too BUSY to do it yourself.
From a friend, follower or connection perspective, I personally like it when I know that I can connect, like, or follow the bloggers or authors that I read.
If I followed Coca-Cola for example, they don’t really have a face for me to connect with.
If I follow Nike, I don’t really expect for Tiger Woods to maintain their social media presence when he is/was the face of Nike among many other athletes.
If I follow apple, I am pretty sure Steve Jobs isn’t the one maintaining the apple profiles. Ironically, close to 7k people are following twitter.com/stevejobs, yet there are no tweets on that account.
I am going to take the path less traveled and say that yes it’s ok for your company to outsource your social media presence but only if your brand or business is more than just your personality.