Not JUST because I’m a media guy, but because I see a lot of companies that straddle the line and probably could use this type of guide to help them determine whether or not they need it and how they can get the best value.

Let’s talk about some things here. Multimedia encompasses so many different things, and for large companies and agencies they typically devote at least a single person to one aspect of those things, if not multiple people. These media types that companies utilize typically consists of photos, videos, web design, and graphic design. This doesn’t actually even include the actual marketing portion of a company, organizing all of this media or the social media aspect. That’s an even larger plan to deal with besides those aspects, and one that ties all of those skills together into a coherent plan that makes the business effective.

If you’re a business that utilizes this type of content, this can be absolutely critical. In the days of COVID and instantaneous media-facebook/insta/tiktok, you can develop an effective media campaign and also have to change it and shift it quickly. Ensuring your message across these platforms is effective and reaches the right customers with the right message is essential to growing or maintaining any business size-whether it’s a small under 10 person business or a fortune 500. And finding those people that can do all the above skills and work together to create that effective media platform for your company is also essential. You don’t need to turn to separate media houses with massive budgets to reach the customers anymore, and that’s just as important within your company budget as well.

So determining if you can afford a media guy is an important aspect of the new age of business. Should you hire a social media guy? A video guy? A photographer? Does your business truly utilize these types of features? Because every business is different, that’s something that only you can decide BUT; if you need to stay in touch with customers on a regular basis and continually feature media in your products/services/posts, then you probably should consider putting a guy on staff or at least contract with a small agency. You CAN do it yourself if you have the time, and there’s plenty of tools to do that as well-I detail that in other posts. But if you don’t want to, or if you’ve got a decent sized business and budget, make it easy on yourself with an expert.   

IF you put a guy on staff; finding a single person that can deal with all of those skills is a deal and an amazing package all in one. It is common to find a video guy who can edit and typically understands photoshop, or after effects, even better that they can shoot and do photography, and an absolute steal that they can do web design and graphic design. That can cut down on your budget dramatically, and keep your expenses in check as well as helping streamline your designs and keep them within the same designer and “feel”. But all of those disciplines are varied-they are different skills and creating those assets from scratch is time consuming. Getting a proper photo may be well, but then editing it, putting it in a format for the delivery-social, website, etc, and creating the graphics and message is important. Don’t underestimate the ability and skill of the people who do this, because it’s the outward facing component of your business and one of the key ways the customer sees you. So give this person or persons the time and space they need to make your business shine. These aspects and assets alone can be worth many many times what they produce for you, and have a direct impact with customers and viewers. It’s also important for education resources-internal and external, as well as other potential revenue streams for your company depending on your business model-Amazon Video, Youtube, podcasts and other reoccurring streams of media.

IF you don’t need a staff member, make sure that you choose an agency that can deal with these assets in the smartest and easiest way possible. There are plenty of places that can deal with your needs, but again, because they vary or they can change quickly, don’t underestimate the costs of the projects that you bring to them. You can utilize services that can pre roll your assets to make this easier, but that’s also time consuming and needs proper organization, so be sure that you keep track of your assets (that audio, video, photo files and more) and that you have the right ability to use the right assets for the right time.

As a small business owner, you typically have your hand in many things at once. Sometimes the work of running the business outpaces the actual work of the business. If it’s something that can save you time, money and effort, consider hiring a media guy on staff, or hiring a media agency that can bring all of these assets together and make them easy for you to use and develop. Think about this-because we all think of the bottom line-if a media guy can organize your media and streamline it to bring in a minimum amount of new customers, then he’s worth the investment to pay a decent salary. If you want a good media guy that can handle all of the above, then you will need it to take your business to the next level.