By esantiago@hubspot.com (Erica Santiago)

As of 2024, 86% of social media marketers say building an active and engaging online community is critical to a successful social media strategy.

If your company wants to build or expand its social media community, you’re probably wondering which approach is better—in-house or outsourced community management.

Fortunately, I have years of experience in both and can give some advice based on what I learned working in-house and later for an outsourced marketing firm.

Here’s what you need to know.

Table of Contents:

In-House Community Management

Outsourced Community Management

How to Choose Between In-House and Outsourced Community Management

In-House Community Management

In-house community management is when an internal employee or team manages community relations between a brand and its audience, especially on social media.

For example, when I was a journalist at First Coast News in Jacksonville, I was a part of the team of reporters that managed First Coast Weather Watchers, a Facebook Community page the station started to better connect with its audience.

Image Source

As was the rest of my team, I was already an internal employee with First Coast News, so we would be considered in-house community management.

Outsourced Community Management

Outsourced community management is when an organization has its online community managed by an outside source, such as a freelancer or marketing firm.

Before working at HubSpot, I worked for a marketing firm that would write content for clients’ web pages.

We also had a team to manage our clients’ social media pages and communicate with their community. This would be outsourced community management since our team was employed by the marketing firm rather than the clients.

How to Choose Between In-House and Outsourced Community Management

Here’s what I notice most companies consider when deciding between in-house and outsourced community management.

Budget

Let’s go back to my TV station example. Most local television news stations have a very tight budget, so it made sense for leadership to keep community management in-house.

In contrast, the companies I worked with at the marketing firm had a bigger budget and could afford to outsource community management. So, when choosing between in-house or community management, consider your budget.

According to ContentFac, outsourcing social media marketing (which includes community management) can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $20,000 per month, with an average of $4,000 to $7,000 per month.

If that sounds like a stretch for your budget, consider hiring in-house.

Expertise

First Coast News easily formed a community management team in-house because we already had the needed expertise.

Most journalists have already honed the skill of connecting with their community and are pretty social media savvy (that’s often how they get the scoops for their stories).

On the other hand, my clients at the marketing firm typically consisted …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

Author: Aaron