The Business of Social Media Management: 5 Common Misconceptions and Tips

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTA physical office isn’t required to be in this business. People will take you seriously even though you work from home.You don’t have to do business all by yourself. This includes social media management, content creation, blog writing and more. It isn’t deceiving to outsource work when you’re running a business if the project is completed and the quality is there.Spending money on tools and systems for your business is smart. Don’t make the mistake of letting them pass by. Invest in what will make your life easier.You must focus on your own social media, too. It must be right, and it must be consistent.Marketing is all about consistency. Going from completely quiet to loud is not the best option. Schedule your social media alongside your client’s social media.Pay attention to your mindset. Your business is entirely dependent on you, so stay motivated!You must stop thinking like an employee.Keep a positive, productive and motivated mindset to keep driving your business forward.THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Your time is valuable! Build in efficiencies to help you, spend money wisely to make your life easier, and reach out to others to support you. Yes, when you are first starting out, times are often tough. But failing to invest in yourself, your mindset and the right tools puts you at a disadvantage from the outset.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSTeresa’s path into social media management – 02:25Misconception #1: You need a physical office to gain trust – 05:14Misconception #2: You have to do it all by yourself – 06:53Misconception #3: You shouldn’t spend money on tools and systems – 10:50Misconception #4: You don’t have time to manage your own social media – 15:18Misconception #5: Mindset doesn’t matter; business is just hard – 19:52LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODEDashThisTeresa’s business resourcesJames Wedmore’s Mind Your Business podcastTranscript below Hey there, and a really, warm welcome to today's episode. I'm your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing, and I'm super glad you've decided to join me for what is hopefully going to be a really exciting episode. Now usually I like to do tools and tactics and strategies all around your social media and how you can use it for business. But every so often, I like to through in a different type of podcast episode that might be around running a business, or some of the mindset tools I've used, and this week I wanted to record on one those types of episodes.Because I've just come back from social day 18, which is the UK's largest social media conference down in London. And I have met lots of entrepreneurs and social media marketing managers who have set up their own social media agency. So I wanted to do an episode today around me running a social media marketing agency. And the five things that I thought had to be done, or the common misconceptions that I had when I started, that now I know just aren't true and actually would have enabled me to got on with my business and developed and grown a lot quicker if I had realised these things.So that's why I wanted to come on today and record this episode so if you are a social media marketing manager, if you have an agency, if your thinking about having an agency or if you just offer social media to businesses where you manage their accounts, then I think you're going to find this episode really, really useful. And I would love to hear your feedback, please. Find me on social media, obviously I'm everywhere. Teresa Heath-Wareing and let me know your thoughts.And if you're not a social media manager, then don't worry about it. I think this is still going to be a great episode, as some of these points that I'm going to go through are just as valuable for people in other industries as they are in the social media world. Teresa’s path into social media management So for those of you that don't know, let me start by just explaining the set up I have and the business I have currently. I started my business back in 2014, and I guess the first thing I should say, was that I never, ever intended to have my own business. I loved being an employee and I joke that I was great one. I am really risk averse, and like I said, I just had no thoughts. It never entered my head for one second, that I would become my own boss, and have my own business.Then a few fairly life changing things happened, and it set me on a path that maybe I wasn't expecting, but boy am I glad it did. And I am happy that I'm here today. Now I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of how I got to start my own business, although that might be a later podcast episode. However, when I first started the business, I thought I was going to be a social media and marketing manager for businesses that didn't want to employ a full time person within their office. So I had visions that I would consult for them, or I would work a day a week for them, and they would have access to a marketing manager with lots and lots of years experience, without the cost.However, over time, that's changed, and I started to realise that, one that limited my time. And therefore, I could only sell out my time that I had available and obviously, there is a finite amount of that. The other thing I realised was that I could only help so many people. If I only had so much time, I could only work with so many businesses, and therefore I wanted to find a way in which I could grow the business and allow myself to work with more people.Now, over the last four years, I have grown my business from me on my own, working with businesses and helping them do their social media where I did everything. Literally everything. And now I am up to a team of six people where we offer a range of services and I have them help me deliver all of those services. And some of the things I'm going to talk you through today are actually really crucial in that development.Now you may not want to be growing the business that you have. You may just want to be getting more structured, you may just want to find ways in which to make your life easier so you don't have to work as hard. I hear you. So I'm really hoping that these five points that I'm going to go over, will make you speed up your process a little bit and also, give you some confidence in your abilities and your ability to sell your service. So let's dive in. Misconception #1: You need a physical office to gain trust Misconception number one. I firmly believed, that when I first started, the thing I needed the most for people to trust and believe in me was a physical office. I know this sounds like a really small thing to start with, but I promise you, I wasted money and not only that, I had a negative opinion of me an my business because I didn't have this big amazing office. I thought to myself that if people couldn't come to an office, if I didn't have a big space, if I didn't have a work environment, that businesses would look at me and think that I was not real. That I was not to be trusted because I wasn't in an office. Because I worked from home. And like I said, I wasted money finding these offices and paying for them, when I had no need for them. Ii would go in everyday ... and don't get me wrong, there is a mindset thing here. At the time I started my business, I was on my own, with my daughter, and I was living on my own. And working all day from home and not potentially going out at all, was really hard work.And I don't think it was necessarily the most productive for me. However, I didn't need that office to be good. I didn't need that office to prove to clients that I could do what I said I could do. So if you sat there thinking people aren't going to take me seriously because I work from home, then get that thought out of your head. If honestly, the client is particularly bothered about that, then they are probably not the client for you. Misconception #2: You have to do it all by yourself Misconception number two. In the early days, I thought I had to do it all myself. And I mean everything. So from all the accounts, to all the marketing activities I was offering, to all the social media management, the content creation, writing the blogs and I don't like writing, as I told you before. So this was not something that came easy to me. And I used to think that in some way, I was cheating the customer if I didn't physically do it myself. I remember having a conversation when I first started. Talking to a, I guess a competitor at the time, although we shared an office. And he was telling me that he got someone else to write blog posts for a client. And I remember being really shocked, like this sounds so stupid now, I can't believe I'm sharing this with you. But I honestly remember being really really shocked thinking, "Well that's really deceiving. The client thinks it's you writing them, and you're getting someone else to do it." And I think I must have been so naive, I had worked in employment for such a long time, that actually when I was given a task, it obviously meant that I had to do it.However, that isn't the case. When your running a business, if you're given a task, then as long as that task gets done and to the level that the client is expecting, then it doesn't have to necessarily have to be you that does it. And therefore, I wasted so...