How To Tell If You Need A Social Media Consultant Company

I could have titled this article simply “How To Tell if You Need A Consultant.” Many years ago I served my time in the corporate world. I’m very grateful for what it provided to my family and it’s how I paid my bills. The one thing that I was in constant amazement over was the sheer amount of consultants that my company hired to tell them how to run their business.

This never set well with me. My upper management, who had very little real world experience, hired consulting services who were equally green. It was the blind leading the blind. The greatest resources the company had but sometimes never used were there all the time. They were called employees. For some reason, upper management at the telecommunications company I worked for refused to use experts. The experts were serving in the trenches every day. The experts were already on the payroll.

If your car started making a grinding noise when coming to a stop would you take it to a plumber? Absolutely not, he’s not an expert at car repair. If your company had a fleet of gas engine service vehicles would you bring in a consultant who specializes in hybrid battery cars to discuss fleet maintenance?

I recently sat through a meeting with a “consultant” as part of a group. This consultant was a smart person and presented the materials great and had some very good ideas in theory. It wasn’t long before the consultant started covering some areas in which I consider myself quite fluent. It took about 2 seconds for my left eyebrow to raise as I realized this person did not know the material that was being taught. As I looked around the room, the others sat quite mesmerized and knew none the better. Inside I just chuckled to myself. The subject matter at hand dealt heavily with website building.

The thought that kept entering my head was “Why was this person brought in as a consultant?” As I looked at the handout materials and I double-checked the business card, there was not even a site listed. Only email, phone number and the obligatory Social Media profiles. I found myself listening to a consultant over web building best practices who did not have a website.

Only Jesus can do that.
A friend of mine is going through consultant hell right now. He works for an oil company. As a matter of fact, my friend has pissed off quite a few of the management because he refers to the conultant as “Jesus.” When pressed as to why he calls him Jesus, my friend says, “He has to be Jesus, he doesn’t own an oil company, has never worked for an oil company but yet he is telling you how to run your oil company, only Jesus could do that.”

Back to my question now, “How to tell if you need a social media consultant company?” Do you already have excellent skills in SEO, internet marketing, community building and driving traffic to your site through effective use of tools like Twitter & Facebook? Do you have anyone serving on your staff that is proficient in Social Media? If you have evaluated your existing resources and the answer is no, it may be time to bring in people who practice what they preach.

Social Media Consulting, Social Media Marketing or Fleet Maintenance advice, make sure you work with real people who actually do the heavy lifting and get dirty. The world is full of fluff and pie in the sky but your company needs to hear from those who serve in the trenches daily. Do your research and make sure that if you are going to hire someone for advice, that they are actually qualified to dispense it.

2010 EchelonMedia.com Social Media Consultants

Related posts:

1. Brian Talks Social Media with The Newspaper Industry – Part II
2. Brian Talks Social Media with The Newspaper Industry – Part I
3. Utilizing ALL Of Your Employees In Your Social Media Strategy
4. Your Business Blog And Social Media; A Match In Online Heaven
5. Social Media And The 80/20 Rule