So you’re about to hire a social media consultant and are ready to get going with them. You have your goals and are super excited to see some results.

But wait… Is what you are expecting anywhere close to realistic?

Let’s take a look at some of the unrealistic expectations I have encountered along the way to help you get more realistic about what a social media consultant actually does.

Promises instant results

I once had a potential client who called about hiring me. I was super excited because I had just met this person at a speaking gig and loved them. But then they went into detail about what they wanted: They had entered a contest, and they wanted to win badly. So they wanted to hire me to make sure they won this contest, and I needed to start next week.

As much as I wanted to work with this person, I passed and gave them some free pointers instead. I let them know that their money would be better spent on some ads instead of hiring a social media consultant.

Why did I do this? I knew nothing about their audience and wouldn’t be able to learn them by next week. They were better experts at that, and if they needed such quick results, they were the only ones that could get them. I would have done more harm than good by likely giving their audience content that just wouldn’t motivate them.

When you bring in a social media consultant, it is more for a long game approach. They are going to take some time to develop a voice and content strategy based upon their own methods. They are not instantly going to make your reach and engagement go through the roof, because they are trying to develop it to be higher for the long-term.

If a social media consultant is promising you instant results, RUN. They don’t know what they’re doing.

Can do web design

I had a potential client come to me for a social media project. Suddenly, in the middle of us discussing this project, they started talking about a website I would design as a part of the project. This had never been mentioned before. As I am a social media consultant and not a web designer, I politely declined the project, as it was becoming clear that it was a web design project and not social media.

Look, I can do basic web design. It’ll never be pretty when I do it, but it will get done. I know what lane I should stay out of and that is a full website design project. Because I will make a mess of it. I have online chops, but there is a place where the line gets drawn.

This is the case for most social media consultants. We can fill in some of the content that should be on the site and take care of some basic maintenance. But that’s it. Anything more than that, you really need to get a professional web designer.

Takes care of internal communications

I once had a client where I worked with several different departments. It quickly became clear that one of the departments didn’t want to communicate with the others. So how did they get around that? By telling me things and expecting that I would pass on the message. As you can imagine, this got messy quick.

I was put in the middle of so many fights that I finally had to put my foot down. I told the person creating the problem that they had to figure out a different way to communicate with the other departments. Thankfully, one of the departments decided on monthly meetings, which helped them speak to each other more directly.

An internal communication plan should never include a social media consultant unless the social media consultant is doing some kind of internal social network. And having clear communication throughout the organization really does prevent a ton of disagreements that could pop up. So please come up with that internal communication plan and leave the social media consultant out of it.

Replaces a marketing team

The worst clients are those that want to keep me in a silo with a non-marketing person as my contact. There are a lot of reasons for this.

My role always gets muddled, and I’m expected to work more as an employee than a consultant. That means tons of scope creep starts happening. If I keep having to put my foot down with you, it is just not going to be enjoyable for either of us.

For some reason, I am always struggling to keep the brand standards upheld. And on top of that, I’m constantly educating and re-educating. I have nothing against educating someone, but usually clients that do this are the ones that are less likely to learn. So every time I bring something new to a client like this, I’m starting from scratch when presenting it to them. It’s tiring. Having someone familiar with marketing and its principles is just vital for us to create an effective social media program.

And client input on content is just vital. If I’m constantly creating it in my silo with a client who does not want anything to do with what I do, I might accidentally start slipping away from client goals and get closer to fan goals. Social media consultants work as kind of go-between for an organization and their fans, trying to find that middle ground for what each wants. If you remove your organization from that conversation, then it’s just natural that the social media consultant will lean more toward the ones who are talking.

Does everything digital

This kind of goes along with the web design, but it’s good to know that digital and social media are two terms that refer to very big things. Some of it intersects. A lot of it does not.

For example, you could have someone who does digital ads which could be advertising on other websites, search engines, etc. It may or may not include social media. In most cases, it wouldn’t. And then there is someone who specializes in social media ads. They would do advertising on social networks, but definitely would not touch websites, search engines, etc. Even thought it sounds like they do the same thing, they definitely don’t.

There is this idea that a social media consultant does graphic design, video, writing, advertising and more. I know very few social media consultants that offer all of those services and none that do it all well. So if you’ve decided you need a social media consultant, decide what’s actually important to your social media program and find someone who does that well.

In so many cases, a social media job is better split between multiple people so that you can get all that you need. I know that’s not possible for everyone. So you have to pick those few things are the most important and focus on finding someone who can do that. Whether it’s actually social media, website work or something else.