Paying for Social Media Training / Consultant

[JETNewbie]

Evening all

I am considering setting up business as a social media consultant to offer training in social media for business use &/or services to run social media marketing for SMEs.

I am in the very early stages of planning & as I've discovered this forum wanted to do a little market research......

• Have any of you paid for such a service in the past &/or would you in the future?
• What would you consider a reasonable sum to pay?
• Would you be more likely to opt for one off or ongoing support?
• Any other relevant insights?

Many thanks

 

[beasty]

How long is a piece of string?

My experience of social media experts or consultants or whatever self appointed title they have is they know barely more than I do as a complete spanner and internet user.

Tell me what you can do that I cannot do?
Then tell me how you can prove this to me before I pay
Tell me how you value the difference

Some people are flat odd just frauds, they know sod all and if anyone pays them they are stealing money

I would be happy to INVEST money where there is going to be a return, if you cannot do that, then i do not see the point..

PM me ready to invest!

 

[annavissi]

Hi,

1. No
2. No
3. 0
4. it can be really useful for people who really can't use google or other free options to consult themselves, or for those who just can't be bothered and have free money. But I am sure you will find a niche for your service - if you really want you can sell snow in Siberia..

 

[Homer J Simpson]

I haven't used the service for anyone to do social media for me because in all honesty, I don't see it being of much value for me. That said, I'd I did ever trying to promote myself via social media, I'd probably pay no more than £100 a month and would expect (probably unrealistic ally) a pretty comprehensive service for this. Why? Because I'd assume (right or wrong) that's is bloody easy and that I just can't be arsed doing it and therefore not worth a large amount of my marketing spend. If anything, I think it's mainly a brand thing than a tool that drives business.

To be honest I don't like any pages of Facebook at all as I just consider it a load of crap. I closed my account down for about six months and only re-opened it to stay in touch with friends abroad.

Social media, is media forcing itself into online social activity.

Sits back waiting for all the social media people to give me grief for this post......

 

[Colin Smith CBP]

How long is a piece of string?

My experience of social media experts or consultants or whatever self appointed title they have is they know barely more than I do as a complete spanner and internet user.

Tell me what you can do that I cannot do?
Then tell me how you can prove this to me before I pay
Tell me how you value the difference

Some people are flat odd just frauds, they know sod all and if anyone pays them they are stealing money

I would be happy to INVEST money where there is going to be a return, if you cannot do that, then i do not see the point..

PM me ready to invest!

You are entering a market where your target market will either be extremely cynical, much like Beasty above, or extremely naive, with the hugely unrealistic expectations that come with such naïveté. Either way, you are entering in to a difficult market served by an already hugely competitive industry. I'm certainly not one to rain on anyone's parade, but you need to make sure you are offering something more than a "me too" service if you hope to do anything other than eke out a living.

As a potential customer for what you hope to offer, I would be interested in a service that could justify it's fees in terms of ROI, confident enough in their skills to offer some kind of guaranteed results. If you could bring this to the table, I for one would be interested.

 

[JETNewbie]

Thanks for the direct & honest replies - exactly what I need! Not a complete shock I have to say, but I do need to work on convincing people.

If someone has a good working knowlege of social media sites or the time to invest on them then you're absolutely right, it's not anything that can't be done by the company themselves.

My target market will be small businesses without this knowlege / time. I feel that I need a good website that clearly explains what social media is, what I do & the benefit of using it / me. & based on my own experience, I do know that it can work providing you have a good strategy & use it as part of a companies overall marketing plan.

I'll be offering this service in an area where the market is not overflowing with 'experts' in this industry. However whether this is because there just isn't the demand, I'm not yet sure. Any suggestions on the best to do market research for this in the area?

I realise that I am not going to be able to retire on this venture, but want to do something that I am knowledgable about, interested in, feel I can offer a good service in & will fit around family life.

Many thanks for your feedback.

 

[Phil Richardson]

I haven't used the service for anyone to do social media for me because in all honesty, I don't see it being of much value for me. That said, I'd I did ever trying to promote myself via social media, I'd probably pay no more than £100 a month and would expect (probably unrealistic ally) a pretty comprehensive service for this. Why? Because I'd assume (right or wrong) that's is bloody easy and that I just can't be arsed doing it and therefore not worth a large amount of my marketing spend. If anything, I think it's mainly a brand thing than a tool that drives business.

To be honest I don't like any pages of Facebook at all as I just consider it a load of crap. I closed my account down for about six months and only re-opened it to stay in touch with friends abroad.

Social media, is media forcing itself into online social activity.

Sits back waiting for all the social media people to give me grief for this post......

This isn't giving grief and is something I hear a lot from businesses.

Social media and lead generation through social media is very easy. If you know what you are doing, know which tools to use and use them right.

If you don't then it is time consuming, pointless and 'a load of crap'. But then that's the same as most things in business.

As a B2B company we generated over £100k in revenue in 2012 where the first contact was through socil media, I expect this to be significantly more in 2013. I always find that something new can cost us time or money and occasionally both but very rarely neither.

Because of this I decided to invest a lot of my own time to understand and test, i'm sure I could have found a consultant to work with but any I spoke to were too geeky, thought social replaced all other marketing and they didn't understand lead generation, certainly not B2B lead generation.

I'm not trying to sell our services as we don't get involved in offering any in the social area currently. However the companies where we do B2B lead generation campaigns integrated into their social and other marketing are those then generate the best returns.

 

[beasty]

This isn't giving grief and is something I hear a lot from businesses.

Social media and lead generation through social media is very easy. If you know what you are doing, know which tools to use and use them right.

If you don't then it is time consuming, pointless and 'a load of crap'. But then that's the same as most things in business.

As a B2B company we generated over £100k in revenue in 2012 where the first contact was through socil media, I expect this to be significantly more in 2013. I always find that something new can cost us time or money and occasionally both but very rarely neither.

Because of this I decided to invest a lot of my own time to understand and test, i'm sure I could have found a consultant to work with but any I spoke to were too geeky, thought social replaced all other marketing and they didn't understand lead generation, certainly not B2B lead generation.

I'm not trying to sell our services as we don't get involved in offering any in the social area currently. However the companies where we do B2B lead generation campaigns integrated into their social and other marketing are those then generate the best returns.

Agree with this part especially, SOCIAL MEDIA is not THE END GAME, it is part of a process and should support other efforts and relationships etc The social media ahem experts I have dealt with seem to think that you are sorted once people give you a thumbs up on Facebook

Giving it a little consideration though, if the OP were to put up a website that could RAPIDLY convince me that he can save me time somewhere then I would listen, there are tools for this stuff and I would be happy to have some kind of focused tuition on how they all mash together and proof of how they work to become real world results.

As i said OP if you can prove it, pm me.. I am not cynical I am open to being convinced but will not give you a tonne of time to do it! Social media is fast so should you be

 

[Ashley_Price]

it can be really useful for people who really can't use google or other free options to consult themselves

Or for those who don't want to spend their time consulting website after website for information and not knowing the wheat from the chaff. Instead they would rather get bespoke training for themselves, and possibly their sales teams.

You can get all sorts of free information telling you how to fix a car... but me? I'd rather pay a mechanic and get it done right. I might come up with a temporarily solution found on the internet, but if the same problem keeps happening, my "free repair" might actually be doing the car more damage and I end up paying a lot more to the mechanic to then fix all the problems I caused.

 

[Ashley_Price]

Giving it a little consideration though, if the OP were to put up a website that could RAPIDLY convince me...

One of the hardest things is selling an "intangible" service. A website will go some of the way but, as I'm in a similar business now as the OP, I am building up testimonials and references.

A word of warning in the form of an anecdote. This is the sort of "positive" referral you don't want:

There's a lady in Brighton who offers to run social media campaigns and someone in my network hired the lady for about 3 months. He said to me a while ago how great it was, she was posting on Twitter and Facebook for him every day, she built up the number of "Likes" and "Followers" his social media accounts had.

I said to him, "That's great if it's what you hired her for". He paused and then replied "Well, actually I had hoped having her run the campaign would bring more business in". I asked "How much have you had?". "None" he replied. "But she was very approachable."

Yes, she probably was very approachable, but she also charges several hundred a month and for what...? He had hired her nearly nine months before for three months, and since then had not seen any increase in business thanks to the campaigns she had run for him.

My advice is get yourself out there and known. I'm am (slowly) building up clients, and do have (three) testimonials on my site, but I am also going and doing presentations and building up my reputation as an "expert" in this field by writing articles, etc. You need to be able to show that your advice works for your own business. You need to get clients from your own social media expertise. If you can't do this, then people are going to wonder how good your service is.

When I was doing the previous service, at least 80% of my clients came from networking, both face-to-face and online. Our second highest-value client came through Twitter (and we had several others). I got clients through Linkedin as well and of course I'm always harping on about how great UKBF was for new clients.

As it happens, tomorrow I have a meeting with a local business owner who wants to increase his customer numbers. Rather than having me teaching him how to promote himself through social media (he doesn't have time), as I always frequent his business he wants ME to run the social media campaign for him. Therefore, my "expertise" (ahem! ) will be tested.

 

[beasty]

Is this good?
How much would this be worth to your business?

In 7 days

A company facebook page that had be stagnant from 500 assorted likes to 1350 with the 850 new all being relevant and also captured 909 opt in emails for the business to follow up.

In 1 week, 500 random people built over a long period, turned into 1350, most importantly the new ones are all potential customers and they also left contact details.

I highlighted the 909 opt in as they are fresh and local potential customers, if followed up the owner will make many many times the money back for his investment.

Start with 5000 followers and you will get a much bigger return.

Interested, drop me a pm and I will put you in touch..

 

[JETNewbie]

Really interesting insights, thanks all & fantastic to see that hard work, knowledge & networking can pay off Ashley Price.

Beasty - certainly makes interesting reading but is this one of those services where you can buy 'likes' & contact details, in which case I would question their claims that they really are potential customers?

 

[Woodham Man]

JETNewbie- Have sentb you a Private Message.

 

[businessfunding]

The way I see it is this:

- Cynics will find reasons to prove you wrong, normally backed with a case study of a 'friend' who launched a random campaign with predictably poor results.

- Suckers will buy into numbers of followers, likes, tweets etc and ultimately turn against you saying it doesn't work.

- Marketeers will aim to understand what yo will deliver, how you will deliver it and what the outcome is likely to be.

So step 1 is to decide - who are you looking to target?

 

[beasty]

Really interesting insights, thanks all & fantastic to see that hard work, knowledge & networking can pay off Ashley Price.

Beasty - certainly makes interesting reading but is this one of those services where you can buy 'likes' & contact details, in which case I would question their claims that they really are potential customers?

Jet,

The service is a targeted promotion using specially built software (He wrote it) that produces results big style

the company whose figures i quoted have taken 3 more runs

does it work.. well put it this way there is a line for his work and you have to wait until he has a slot to set you up and then you go to the back of the line.

So in a nutshell yes it works and I know how you can boost numbers through the roof with zero value, this is not that.

All about the money

 

[JETNewbie]

Hi all

I realise that there are mixed feelings about social media(!), but wondered if you have any suggestions on how to conduct more in depth market research on this? Not quite sure where how to start, especially as at least 50% of my target market may not be greatly computer literate!

Many thanks

 

[ethical PR]

Hi all

I realise that there are mixed feelings about social media(!), but wondered if you have any suggestions on how to conduct more in depth market research on this? Not quite sure where how to start, especially as at least 50% of my target market may not be greatly computer literate!

Many thanks

• Focus Groups
• survey monkey
• business networking
• pay business organisations targeting your target audience to distribute survey

Why do you think 50% of your market are not greatly computer literate?

I use social media agencies and digital marketing agencies for campaigns in these areas. And for my team to receive training in digital storytelling.