Offering "social media" as a service to clients?

useful in certain niches, plus they are high powered backlinks

Costas,

There does need to be interaction in social media, and I make it clear that they are responsible for keeping the accounts active.

I also integrate automated tools to keep their accounts active, but not as active as it takes to generate great success.

They are purchasing the creation of the accounts and integration of the accounts so there is a consistent message.

Mark Riddle

Charge a fee to set up a system to acquire friends/ followers (i.e. some sort of software and process to use it). Charge also for structuiring their communications on the network.

Costas,

Fully managed would be kind of like hiring an employee to impersonate you.

Social media requires you to be genuine with the people you interact with.

It needs to be the real person to build relationships with your friends, followers and clients.

Its kind of like having your wedding, but then hiring someone to go on the honeymoon.

Mark Riddle

This is something I've been doing for almost 4 months now,

reputation management is a big deal with small/mid size businesses.

You really do have to put together a killer package though, a "Social Media Package" in my eyes would be help with the blog, social networking profiles and consulting on how to utilize all of these for maximum results.

Once you have this sorted you can charge $100-200/per hour, it's worked for me anyhow.

Cheers

Alex

For a business presence in social media, I have found that you can charge a company for you to maintain their site. It is kind of like you becoming an employee of that company for so many hours a week or month, however you want to do it. I have found that if you leave it to the company to run after you set it up, then they will not do it.

Perry Belcher's 21 page report on his new Social Media Money System would probably be a good read for anyone looking into getting their feet wet in the social media space.

The 80,000 followers he got in 100 days was pretty strong and his claim of generating $1 per follower per month sure did get my attention.

He has a few pretty decent videos to feed the buzz on his July 23rd launch.

He provides some pretty nice swipe file content as well.

A quick blog post and a few 'share this' links to Digg, Stumble, Twitter, Facebook et al has proven pretty effective so far.

I have two clients I do social media for including social bookmarking, blog posting, social sites and more. I set up accounts on places such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace etc. I add friends, comment, blog post, bulletin etc. I do not believe in using bots or software for friend adding or commenting as it violates TOS in most cases.

I am not driven by numbers of friends preferring quality friends that will interact/find value. I mean who really cares if you have a ton of friends on Twitter. Anyone can get a ton of friends there. Quality and the right target audience is most important.

As far as Mark's comment that would be like hiring an employee to impersonate you. It depends on how it is done. I represent the company and stay on top of what they are doing so I can interact effectively under their name. This is not impersonation. This is working for the company.

The companies love the traffic and I really enjoy doing it!

Online reputation monitoring/management is another service you can add to your arsenal. I monitor Yelp and other customer review sites for several retail businesses as well as Angie's List for my contractor clients. It requires some setup and a confirmation call but only requires minutes per day.

I agree that social media is the way to go for today's businesses, but most businesses will not maintain their social properties unless they understand the value to their business. Having your offline clients asking for this service at least lets you know they're thinking about it, and they're opening a door for you to give them what they need.

When you put together a social media package for offline businesses and include ongoing posts, etc. it's perfectly ok to develop a "personality" that represents the business. It's done every day in marketing, both online and offline. There's nothing unethical about it.

Some of the posts can be made automatically, but you'll still have to include a personal touch - I'd strongly suggest you consider the cost to outsource this task, add a respectable markup, and then submit your bid. It's tedious work, and I'm sure your time would be better spent doing something else. If the business wants to do the work themselves, charge for the setup and for the time to train their employees.

Yes, I've been selling offline for 20+ years so I have sold many services this way. Not social marketing specifically, but you can substitute one service for another. The basic concept is the same.

That's why I say to cover your outsourcing fees upfront. If a business owner wants your help, they'll pay your fee. If they don't want/can't afford your fee, that's ok. It's better to say "next!" and move on.

It's good business sense to price yourself right from the start. That way you'll stay in business, and that's good for both you and for your client.

In my experience, being the middleman/woman is the way to have the best of both worlds - this way you can offer more services and be the go-to person for your clients.

If you don't currently have anyone to outsource these tasks to, do a search on this forum for suppliers of what you need. Check out their other posts and choose whoever you feel will be professional and reliable. Then build this cost into your bid. I'm sure you'll do great!

Basically I will do it all for the client. I set up sites like Myspace, Twitter etc and run them. I write blog posts, tweet, do article marketing, social bookmarking etc. Or they may just want a mini-blast to share a promotion. I can do that to. We look at the over all goal and how best to accomplish it.

I also actively search for more ways to get my clients out there. This could mean networking to cross promote with other companies, looking for active forums to post thoughtful comments on, writing articles to leap to the top of the google pile, etc.

I am familiar with how the social sites work, what is and what is not allowed, how to facilitate the best interaction. Also little tweaks that can result in a greater presence on the site and drive more traffic. I am also representing the client and do so in a way that fits with their personality. With social sites you want to share and enjoy the interaction but at the same time you keep interaction at a certain level so things run smoothly. It's warm but still professional.

My goal is to provide tremendous value both to the client I am driving traffic to and to whatever sites we are using.

It is all done organically and with true thought. We are building relationships here. We want to drive genuine traffic and go for quality over quantity.

It is time consuming. And I am not a 9-5 er...neither are the social sites.

That said I love doing this. Absolutely love it!