About a week ago, I wrote about how all too often, the money spent on consultants is wasted because executives assume if they are paying for a solution there is no work required on their part. But it isn’t true.

This problem is not just limited to large companies. On a regular basis, I get calls from busy small business owners who want to “outsource” their social media. They have more money than time and will gladly pay if we can just make the issue go away. But we can’t. While we can provide a foundation, without some involvement from our client, the social voice is flat.

And it doesn’t have to be the owner. One of our clients is encouraging every member of their small team to like and share the content we are putting on their Facebook page. We can see a dramatic difference in post views on the days when they take the time drop by the company page. As Facebook becomes more and more restrictive in their display of company updates, these personal shares become more and more important.

The bottom line:

• You need to be visible on social media
• You can outsource some of the heavy lifting
• If you aren’t going to be involved, don’t bother. Buy an ad instead

We were curious about how small business owners are delegating social media responsibilities, so it was one of the many questions we asked in our annual social media survey. If you would like a copy of the white paper, you can download it here: