How and Why to Have Remote Freelancers Run Social Commerce Strategy

To maximize your social commerce strategy as a business person, you need to have qualified people to run it.  By hiring qualified people from all over the world to run your page, you can fully utilize social media networks to support online buying or selling of products.

You might be wondering why you should let remote freelancers run social commerce strategies instead of hiring in-house. The question you need to be asking is why you should limit yourself to a small group of talent when there is plenty of more specialized freelancers flowing on the global market.

To fully appreciate this idea of having freelancers run social commerce, here are the seven benefits you can capture.

Focus on What You Are Good At

As a business owner, you need to focus on your strengths, saving time for things that you are good at or passionate about. Hiring freelancers whose strength is in using social media platforms to make sales can free you to do what you enjoy, like traditional marketing or administrative work.

Make Use of the Experts

A successful social media campaign requires experts to manage it. Doing it yourself might not get you the results you need. Freelancers are able to make it on their own because of their honed skills that make them highly marketable without another brand to back them up. Freelancers also tend to be highly specialized since they can focus on a particular skill set or platform.

When you decide to let freelancers run social commerce strategies, you will get experts at the various social accounts who open up gateways to bring about sales.

Access to Global Talent

If you only hire from within your geographical location, you will limit your access to talent. Plus, you will face greater competition for that limited talent pool.

Do you think an eCommerce company such as Amazon has Jeff Bezos running their Facebook page and listing the latest Amazon discounts every day? No, nor do they hire only within the Seattle area. They have dedicated experts for social media marketing whom they have sourced from around the world to constantly implement strategies for growing the company’s reach on social networks.

Exploit the Different Time Zones

When freelancers run social commerce, you are hiring people from different continents. They can work through different hours of the day and night. Hence, you will have someone managing your accounts 24/7 and keeping up with audience flows.

Access to More Productive People

Freelancers are more productive than in-office hires since they are paid according to the actual hours worked and retained according to the results they produce. They can’t afford to be lax. More so, they are cut off from office disruptions like idle chats with colleagues and impromptu meetings. They are also free from the stress of those long commutes which make many regulars miserable and unable to perform efficiently when they reach work. Since freelancers are happy working remotely, they can be more productive.

Also, some people are more productive during the day while others like to work at night, so having freelancers run social commerce when they are at their best means you will get the best out of them.

Save Money

If your social media accounts are being run by remote freelancers, you will cut out on insurance benefits, withholding tax, and monthly salaries since freelancers are paid only for work actually done and accounted for.

Freelancers also tend to work when regular employees would be absent, since they rely on filling up their hours and also because they can work from home. Unscheduled absence leaves due to illness or bad weather conditions that regulars are vulnerable to are mostly cut out. These low productivity days cost you money, but not when freelancers run social commerce.

Reduce Turnover

You may not have a huge budget for recruitment. You may be thinking that you can use an existing hire to take on social media management. You want to fully utilize the hours that you are already paying for, but you also want someone who is reliable. In the end, you will probably give this role to someone who already has so much to do because they are a great at work. On top of the heavy workload, they are probably not passionate about the work, and this will eventually make them want to resign.

Letting a freelancer run social commerce strategies allows others to enjoy doing the work they were hired for in the first place. Also, career freelancers rarely quit because they have already freely decided on what work they want to focus on and what hours they want to keep. Freelancers are generally happier, and the good ones don’t take on work that they don’t want.

Now that you know why it’s good for your social commerce to hire remote freelancers, it’s time to decide on a particular social media platform to focus on.

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Focus Your Social Commerce Strategy

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are the four social platforms currently driving the bigger share of retail traffic. You will be tempted to use them all, but its best to choose only one to start with. Your choice will depend on the best fit for your company and your target audience: their likes, where they spend most of the time, and how they like to buy.

People between 25-54 years, who constitute 82% of social media users, are more receptive to social commerce in general. Younger people use platforms like Instagram more, while the older ones spend more time on Facebook and Twitter.

The products you sell and your business model also matter. Clothing, jewelry, sports and dropshipping perform well on Facebook. On Twitter, it’s brands dealing in retail/catalog, furnishing, gifts, and specialty items. On Pinterest, books, IT niches, and antiques/collectibles sell the most, while clothes do very well on Instagram.

Having chosen the most suitable social media platform for your business, you will then have to decide on the people you need to run it.

Social Media Manager

Find someone who is great at running marketing campaigns, creating relevant and entertaining content for target customers, and socially engaging with customers while cultivating sales. This manager will be responsible for updating your account with new product launches, run promotions, and respond professionally to inquiries and reviews. Remember to hire an expert on the platform you are using.

Customer Service Representatives

Use these freelancers to keep track of customers who have bought products on your social media page and ensure they get their purchases on time. Sort out any order issues that may arise, such as delays and damaged products.

Ads Expert/Strategist

You will hire a social media manager who can run ads campaigns for you, but these tend to be generalists offering a range of services. They can run ads for you, but may not be able to create your strategy.

It would be wise to hire a platform-specific ads expert to optimize your campaigns for high conversion rates. Ads strategists keep an eye on developing trends and know what will work for you. Hence, they can create effective ads strategies on top of running your ads.

Facebook Ads offer the best return among all social media platforms, so if you are using it, hiring a Facebook Ads expert would be prudent.

Influencer

Partner with influencers who are familiar with a brand that’s similar to yours to market your products. Instagram influencers take the lead at doing this.

Influencers market your products to their followers through a single post or run an entire campaign where they mention them in posts, wear your brand clothes, and share links back to your pages. Some can become affiliates and make a commission off every product bought through them. Influencers can market for a fee or in exchange for product, gifts, or services.

Designer

You will need a designer with search engine optimization skills to create a professional social media account that can easily be found online. A designer will optimize the business page for keywords and use a layout that facilitates impulsive buying and makes the purchase experience easy by incorporating features from your website like shopping aids and payment gateways.

Hire and Manage the Right Freelancers to Run your Social Commerce Strategy

Just knowing the type of freelancers you will need to hire will not be enough for you to hire the best ones for your needs. You will need to create profiles of the kind of people you want to work with that are a good fit for your culture.

Come up with the hours that you want them to work. If you don’t know when your account should be active, hire an expert to help you create the strategy, then hire an appropriate manager to implement it at the right times.

Create strong policies that will keep communication lines open so that you can constantly get updates on what’s being done and when. Maintain the same culture for freelancers as you do for in-office employees to ensure that everyone knows whatever is going on in the business.

Create an online office on Slack or a similar platform where everyone can effectively collaborate to ensure that they are always on the same page.

If you don’t have the time to build a group of freelancers for you social efforts or you need help finding the right ones, reach out to FreeUp CEO Nathan Hirsch to discuss your business needs and sign up for a free account.

Josh Wardini is an Editorial Contributor and Community Manager at websitebuilder.org. With preliminary background in communication and expertise in community development, Josh works day-to-day to reshape the human resource management of digitally based companies. When his focus trails outside of community engagement, Josh enjoys the indulgences of writing amidst the nature conservations of Portland, Oregon.