“Social Media is FREE!”
“Why pay for assistance when social media tools are free?”
“What are we paying you for? Our staff can do this a few minutes each day and be as successful.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Let me show you why:
If a single employee, making approximately $12.00 per hour, is required to spend approximately an hour blogging, 30 minutes tweeting, and 30 minutes on Facebook per day; your estimated monthly expense is $480.00.
OR
Take a salaried employee… earning about $30,000 annually. If this person already has a job, and you add on a little social media expense to their job description, what would that cost? What if they only participate an hour on Facebook and an hour on Twitter each day? (Keep in mind: no set-up, monitoring, or reporting is included here.) Just 2 hours a day would cost $576 per month.
ADD
Now, add in printed materials. Let’s assume you need a bootleg/bandit sign, some door hangers, and posters to announce your new social presence. If this costs $100, the pro-rated monthly cost would be only $8.
Next, add in a CallSource number, because you want to track where your leads are coming from; $10.
Last, you want a new application. Doing it yourself takes time, so say you build a single custom FBML page for your Fan Page. You design for an hour, code for an hour, test and work out kinks with a total of 4 hours; $115.
TOTAL = $709.
“Time is money,” is a reality in business.
But don’t take it from me, see what other industry professionals have to say in response to “Is doing-it-yourself FREE?”
How much time, per day, does your staff dedicate to social media? When it is convenient? News flash! Social media isn’t about convenience, it is about availability and responsiveness. Can you rely on your staff to be responsive and still do the other tasks you’ve assigned to them each day?
I’m not saying that getting your staff involved is a bad thing, to the contrary. Staff involvement is critical for success. However, does your staff have the time built in to their daily schedules each day to contribute to your social media plan? Honestly, 2 hours a day is not enough. How would you scale your social media marketing initiative? Hire more employees? How will they be trained?
When relying on in-house staff to contribute, be prepared to be disappointed. Ask yourself, your business, if you would want an employee to represent your business on camera during primetime. If the answer is no, then do you want them representing your business on social networking sites? There are several ways your company can approach the implementation of a social media strategy. Hire on more employees, train current employees, hire a 3rd party service provider, or all of the above. In any case, it is not “FREE”.
Success depends on the investment and commitment to the strategy. How is your organization currently implementing their social media strategy? Do you think social media marketing is free?
Image Credit: barrylou.com
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Very practical approach. In order for the tools to be maximized there simply cannot be a set “time” of day to use the channels. It would be as unreasonable as day traders just arriving at the 9am bell and then going home. The tools are always on and need a strategic approach by companies to use them for their maximum potential.
Sounds strangely familiar . . . oh yeah – this is the same math used to justify saving money on painting and cleaning vacant apartments by having the maintenance team do it (with no overtime, of course – we’ll give them “comp time”) instead of hiring more staff or using a contractor. Bullseye, Charity – you get what you pay for and if you add two hours of work to someone’s daily rountine, you had better be prepared to subtract two hours of other work. And even then, as you point out, “How will they be trained?”. With the size of the SM audience, we just can’t afford to wing it anymore – we need trained professionals representing us.
PS – thanks for the CallSource mention
Paying someone to handle your social media within your company is surfacing more and more, everyday. I see the same situations with SEO. Small business owners have tried taking on the task because they feel as if they can wing it. What really happens is they waste time, when they can be making money.
Thank you Roscoe Props for the comment! You are absolutely right. What’s worse is when they neglect their profiles because of turnover or access issues and their page is hijacked by spammers!