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A new report from Social Media Examiner’s Michael Stelzner has found that social media outsourcing has increased 128% in the past two years. In 2012, 32% of marketers said they are outsourcing social media marketing.

All sorts of social media marketing tasks are being outsourced, including:

• Design/development
• Analytics
• Content creation
• Monitoring
• Research
• Strategy
• Status updates
• Community management

Maybe you’ve been thinking about outsourcing your company’s social media marketing. Should you? As you know, there are risks and benefits to doing so. You could certainly save a lot of time and resources when handing your social media marketing over to an expert, but if you hire the wrong person or company to manage your social media marketing, you risk doing severe damage to your brand.

So, when does it make sense to outsource your social media marketing? Every situation is different, but here are some general guidelines to consider.

• You lack the time to stay active on social media—Effective social media marketing takes time. Remember, social media is about connecting with customers and building relationships. This takes time. You can’t halfheartedly do it and attempt to build meaningful relationships with your target audience. So, if you already have a full plate, don’t add social media marketing to it. Consider getting some outside help.
• Your current social media efforts aren’t paying off—Have you been managing your own social media marketing with no success? If you’ve given your way an honest shot and it just isn’t working out, turning to an expert could be the smartest move.
• You don’t know how to leverage social media—Maybe you don’t know a whole lot about social media. Maybe you can’t understand how sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest can be used to build your brand. If you need help connecting the dots and making social media work for you, outsourcing probably makes sense.
• You don’t know have a strategy or a way to measure results—Like any other type of marketing, social media marketing is most effective when you have a strategy. What do you want to achieve? How are you going to do it? How will you measure your results? Outsourcing your social media to the right person or company can help with all of this.

Do you outsource any of your social media marketing? Why or why not?

I recently wrote a post detailing the reasons I like to schedule my Tweets. I understand that it’s a topic that many people disagree over. I’ve talked to people who tell me that scheduling Tweets is a terrible idea, and I’ve also spoken with others who share my belief that there are many benefits to scheduling Tweets in advance.

In the interest of presenting both sides of the debate, I’m going to present the case against scheduling your Tweets. I encourage you to add your opinion to this debate by leaving a comment after you’ve read this post.

So, what are some of the potential drawbacks of scheduling your Tweets?

• It could remove the social element—The whole point of Twitter is to interact with other people. If all of your Tweets are written in advance and scheduled, you risk losing the social element that makes Twitter so popular. That’s why I don’t rely only on scheduled Tweets. I still stay active on Twitter to take part in real-time conversations.
• You may get behind the times—Think about this. You write a Tweet today that’s not scheduled to go out for another few weeks. What if things change between now and then? What if that Tweet suddenly becomes outdated or even inaccurate? Or what if the conversation in your industry has simply shifted to a new topic but you’re still discussing the last trend? You don’t want to get behind the times when you schedule your Tweets.
• Breaking news could make scheduled Tweets irrelevant or awkward—This blog post tells the story of Twitter users whose scheduled Tweets were popping up at the exact same time news was breaking of Osama Bin Laden’s death. The pre-written Tweets came across as irrelevant, very awkward, and even insensitive given the major news that had just broken. That’s always a risk you’ll run into when scheduling your Tweets.

Are there any other reasons you can think of to not schedule Tweets? Share them with us by leaving a comment below.

Sharing links on Twitter is one of the most popular types of status updates. It’s an easy way for you to stay active on Twitter, and it can be a good way to provide useful, interesting information to your audience, garnering their attention and even sparking conversation.

But it probably goes without saying that not all links are worth Tweeting. You don’t want to Tweet just anything and everything you come across while surfing the web. You need to put careful thought into which links you decide to Tweet.

So, how can you tell if a link is worth sharing? Ask yourself the following questions:

• Will my followers be interested in this? Above all else, you want to make sure that you’re sharing content your followers will actually care about and enjoy. If you’re Tweeting things that your target audience has no interest in or use for, they will quickly begin to tune you out. Every Tweet matters. Don’t share content if you don’t think your followers will be interested in it.
• Will anyone be offended by this? Sharing content that could be deemed offensive can be dangerous. You don’t want to lose a chunk of your followers and customers by sharing offensive content, but on the other hand, you may be the type of person who likes to push the envelope and wants an edgier audience. It all depends on the type of person you’re trying to appeal to.
• Will the content start a discussion and get a reaction? Ideally, you want to share content that sparks a discussion. You want people to be so compelled by the content you share that they respond and interact with you. That’s how you build relationships that matter on Twitter.
• Who produced the content? There’s nothing wrong with sharing your own content, but you do want to mix things up. Sharing content from a range of trusted sources will position you as a good resource to your Twitter followers.

Do you put thought into what links you share on Twitter? What’s important to you?

Scheduling social media updates is a hotly-debated topic. Critics say that social scheduling is unnatural and runs counter to the whole point of social media, which is to interact with others. I disagree. Here’s why I schedule some of my Tweets.

1. It frees me up to interact—When I schedule the bulk of my Tweets ahead of time, I’m then able to spend the few free moments that I do have to actually get on Twitter interacting with my followers. I don’t have to worry about finding interesting content to share or coming up with a good status update. That’s already been taken care of, and now, I can spend time replying to other people’s Tweets, ReTweeting things I like in my feed, and building relationships with my followers.
2. I can’t always find the time to Tweet each day—Running my business all on my own is more than a full-time job. I have clients to manage, projects to complete on tight deadlines, leads to follow up on…the list goes on and on. I just don’t have the time to devote to Twitter every single day. I try, but it’s just not always realistic to pull myself away from all the other work I have to do. Scheduling my Tweets ahead of time ensures that my presence is always felt, even when I can’t be there.
3. It prevents me from clogging followers’ streams—Is there anything more annoying than when someone clogs your stream with 20 updates in the span of a few minutes? Those are the Twitter users who don’t schedule their Tweets and then binge Tweet whenever they’re able to find the time to login to Twitter. Scheduling my Tweets ahead of time let’s me space them out properly.
4. I can reach more followers across the world—I have followers all across the world. And since I have to sleep at some point, I can’t reach all of them in real time. By scheduling my Tweets, I can reach more followers in different time zones, even when I’m snoring in bed.
5. The quality of my Tweets increases—I’ve found that writing my Tweets ahead of time allows me to focus on creating better content than when I quickly create a Tweet on the spot. I’m able to focus on truly creating content my audience will find interesting and useful.

Do you schedule your Tweets? Why or why not?

In an ongoing effort to expose bad marketing advice, I’ve created the series “Marketing Myths.” If you’ve missed the first 2 parts of this series, you can check them out here:

Marketing Myths: Part 1—Every Customer Should Love Your Brand

Marketing Myths: Part 2—The Customer Is Always Right

In this entry, I want to talk a little bit about social media marketing. Over the past few years, we’ve seen companies using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, and a host of other social sites to raise awareness and attract new customers.

Of course, it didn’t take long for the “social media experts” to appear and proclaim how companies should use these platforms to engage customers. I swear that a week doesn’t go by that I don’t see a post outlining some new rules for social media marketing. If you believe these “gurus” there’s a right way and a wrong way to do social media.

I don’t believe it.

In fact, this notion runs contrary to the whole point of social media. The point of social media is that it gives the user the power to do or say whatever they want. If someone wants to use their Facebook to share photos of the food they eat, that’s totally fine. If someone wants to blast links to their blog to the Twitterverse, that’s their right.

This idea that you have to use these social sites in one specific way is simply flawed. There are countless companies having success with their social media marketing, and many of them approach it in different ways.

For example, JetBlue Airways uses Twitter as a customer service tool. They interact with customers who have issues, provide updates about flight times and delays, and work to improve the overall flying experience for customers.

Undoubtedly, you’ve heard people say that you shouldn’t use Twitter strictly to advertise to customers. Well, don’t tell that to Dell. They have a Twitter account specifically setup to broadcast deals to customers. Virtually every Tweet they send out is an advertisement for one of their products. But guess what? As of the time I’m writing this, they have 1,534,842 followers. Clearly, they’ve had success by using an approach many social media marketers would tell you is wrong.

The point is there is no right or wrong way to do social media. There are things that will produce results for your company and other things that could possibly damage your brand, but every company is different. The only way to find out what works for your company is to experiment.

What do you think—Is there a right way and a wrong way to do social media?