A friend asked me about setting up a Social Media Service business and this is what I emailed her.
Great idea! Social is HOT! You should be v proud. I'll do anything I can to help.
I know a LOT of oldER folks who do this. Rates vary WIDELY.
Lots of uni folks are jumping on this, but the kids know more than the teachers do. Probably neither see the business impact.
Personally, if I were her, I would set up some "product-based" services that small business folks could wrap their heads around... for $x.00 you get "y" services. And I would focus on a niche like LOCAL set ups or just GOOGLE PLACES or FACEBOOK set ups or something niche-y.
Folks LOVE flat rate stuff. Hourly rates scare the heck out of people.
Is she setting up accounts for folks, or writing daily tweets / posts, or getting more followers, or reporting on the people seeing / reacting to social?
LOCAL -- I think setting up and claiming Google Local accounts and monitoring reviews is a HUGE opportunity. Look at Google HOTPOT for all the businesses with unclaimed profiles. I read somewhere that it was 55 million business who haven't done that yet... Super easy to do. Some folks get $500 for setting up and then $100 a month or more for monitoring reviews. And that's LOW END.
For example, have a month to month package which includes setting up a social campaign with x monthly posts which she writes out daily posts (and the owner approves). Maybe throw in "reputation monitoring" to show any mentions of company/events, as well as responses to mentions. Folks ALSO like reporting on a monthly basis to show mentions, retweets, followers, clicks on links, conversions from social media, etc.
FACEBOOK -- Or have a flat rate package to set up a FACEBOOK PROFILE using the owner's facebook account, pimp it out, and post the same info on Facebook feed using one of the programs to send out info at regular intervals...
TWITTER -- same thing.
PRICING -- Not that you asked, ;) but I would ALSO start out with some $97 lite set-up packages to get some "success stories..." Or even freebies since at first your only costs are her time.
Once she has some success under her belt, THEN I would figure out what I wanted to take home an hour (?$15 -- this is a teenager), estimate monthly time to do the work, DOUBLE that to cover the REAL amount of time it's going to take, then multiply THAT times 3 to get the "retail" price to cover the overhead (new Mac, etc), time spent selling, running reports, and other administrative BS.
And get her to track her time to reconcile ACTUAL time on campaigns to paid time on campaigns...
BTW Is she 18 yet? If not, liability comes back on you, so I would NOT include her friends in anything. In 1989 one of our comic buddies wanted to "get in with us" when we started Gun Dog Comics, but Steve and I knew better from our folks' experience to NOT take on partners. Turns out when we hired him as an employee he spent more time reading comics than sorting comics.
AND Personally, I would NOT want to be the "voice" of any company besides my own, and let other folks respond to negative posts or trolls or spammers. I am NOT a lawyer, but probably LOTS of liability there... And IMHO you want her to be paid for her writing, and/or setting up autopilot posting on someone else's work computer at their office after everything is signed off on...
And later, if she was doing it from home, I would use a separate PC for this (and I would use a MAC for anti-virus purposes) because the last thing you want is YOUR computer with multiple users / hacked account possibilities where someone gets in YOUR email and/or steals your profiles and spams the hell out of them...
When she breaks ??? $5K in billing, I would set up an LLC, and look at some liability insurance. Errors and omissions is pretty cheap, but that's down the road...
Sorry for complete brain dump...
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