One of the panel sessions we are going to hold at Local Social Summit 2011 (LSS’11) in November that I am most looking forward to is titled “Can Social Media Be Outsourced?” The starting point of the debate will be from the perspective of the small and medium sized local business. The questions we will explore include:

• Is it effective for a local business to outsource some or all of its social media activity?
• Does it scale?
• Is it even ethical?
• What process should a local business use to decide the strategy on in-house vs. outsource?
• What criteria should they use to choose the right supplier/partner?

However, we are also sure to cover this question from the perspective of the big brand or even better the national/global businesses that have a local store or presence (think of any restaurant chain, for example).

An easy answer to this questions is “YES” social media can be outsourced. There are many companies offering social media services and tools. For a larger or more geographically widespread business it is probably a necessity to outsource some part or even all of their social media activity, yet alone build up social media skills in house. The sheer volume of potential work and a growing number of social channels drives the need for engagement by all sizes of business.

A quick survey of the web for recent posts on this subject found two posts YES and two post NO:

• Why You Should Never Outsource Your Social Media
• Automate the right way
• 5 Reasons Small Business Should Outsource Their Social Media Marketing
• 6 reasons why you should never outsource social media

For this session we have several interesting panellists already lined up. These include Justin Sanger, CEO & Founder of JoinHere and Seb Provencher, Co-Founder of Needium. However, I am pretty sure they will both be in the “YES” camp. If you are in the “NO” camp and want to be the detractor who says “no you cannot outsource your social media” – then please get in touch.

Note: Here is the Agenda for the 3^rd Annual Local Social Summit. If you are working at the intersection of Local and Social Media then you will not want to miss LSS’11.