I think it comes down to “would my audience be disappointed if they knew I’d outsourced X”.

If X was my blog posts - yes.
If X was my comments on blogs, or contributions to forums - yes.
If X was Digging or otherwise bookmarking friend’s posts - probably no. As long as I’d given guidelines (e.g. no Digging things of questionable taste).
If X was tweeting my blog posts - no.
If X was tweeting other interesting sites - I dunno. Maybe people who had followed me would want to see my personal choices. Or maybe they just want to see good choices no matter what the source.

Ian

I’m not comfortable with having them communicate on my behalf though.

Gavin Allinson

This is an issue that I am dealing with right now. I have no problem producing the content but the added time investment it takes to get it noticed socially is another story.

I am open to possibilites,

Mark Edward Brown
“The Marketing Professional”

Ideally this person could be drawn from within your organisation and as a slight alternative, businesses can empower and even train all their staff to be active in social media environments.

That doesn’t have to mean roomfuls of people Twittering away or lounging around on Facebook but perhaps something along the lines of building their profile on LinkedIn (Answers) or commenting on industry blogs - perhaps even writing their own.

As for self-employed professionals my advice would again to spend their time on business related forums, LinkedIn and equivalents and blogging about their industry.

10-15 hours per week is a big commitment but consistency is the key rather than sheer quantity, if you can manage an hour a day to answer questions on an industry forum and post to your blog then that’s time well spent.

1) What is the most effective use of your time - what activities are going to bring in the highest return on on investment?

2) What is the risk of someone, who doesn’t know your business as well as you do, inadvertently causing a PR nightmare because of something they posted online on your behalf?

I am sure you will see a lot of new social network marketing companies pop up targeting people who have heard the buzz words but don’t know enough to screen the right people for doing it.

In theory you could also outsource the actual networking… however the whole point of social networking is the personal interaction and relationship with others. Let’s take blogging for example. Blog posting can be outsourced. Yet when Tim Ferris (of the 4 Hour Work Week) said, in an April Fool’s joke that all his very personal blog posts had been done by one of his “outsourcers” the disappointment from readers was palpable. He blogged in such a way that people felt they were talking with him… they were not impressed to learn that it wasn’t him after all. Some even threatened to leave and accused him of letting them down… others were more less bothered. He did say (after nearly 100 comments) that he’d been blogging all along (of course). But the point is, if it’s relationships you want from social media networking then outsourcing isn’t the way to go. I’ve also read some outsourced plr blog posts and I find them devoid of personality. I also dislike the auto-Twitters. Things like bookmarking, or even guest posts could be outsourced… in the latter the reader knows this.