I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I came across an article announcing that Nike had decided to finally take its social media efforts in-house.
I hadn’t thought about it, but the last thing I expected was for Nike, a prominent world-wide consumer brand, to have been outsourcing its social media. I mean, didn’t Nike have enough capital to allocate funds and resources towards its own separate social media department? I know for a fact that Nike takes its social media seriously; I have kicks-obsessed friends who subscribe to Nike’s Twitter account, and their phones would constantly blow up daily with tweets from Nike announcing new shoe releases.
Learning that Nike outsourced its social media surprised me, but also gave me a sense of relief. The fact that Nike outsourced its social media to outside agencies showed that it was humble enough to entrust its brand in the hands of other people. And at KWSM, we know this takes a lot of courage. We encounter a lot of clients who are scared of handing over their social media to us, because it means trusting us with their reputation and their image. It’s a nerve racking step to take, but once our clients realize that we take care of their brand as we would our own, they feel much more at ease.
There’s nothing wrong with outsourcing your social media. A lot of companies do so because they don’t have the necessary resources to do it properly themselves. Of course to brands like Nike, money and time are never the big issues at hand. Yes, Nike has had the funds and the means to be able to hire someone in-house to handle its social media, but why do so when there are agencies already out there with limitless social media creative brain power? Nike knew that sometimes, it’s just better to leave it up to the experts.
