Social media is no longer a cheap option
22
2010
We’ve worked on a number of social media campaigns now – many of them very successful. You might remember some of them – Beat Blue Monday is now an annual news feature and Wensleydale Creamery is doing very well too.
But whenever we mention social media to some prospective clients their faces light up as they think social media is free. Social media saves time they think. Social media will save our business thousands, if not millions.
And yes you can save on the equivalent costs from a traditional deadwood media marketing or advertising campaign and better still you can get instant results and measurement. But that level of service does not come cheap – it can if you do it yourself and chuck up a blog, set up a Facebook page, a Twitter account and maybe do something with YouTube.
But what’s your strategy? Do you know what people are saying about you – have you done an audit? What are your objectives? Which social media tools are you going to use?
Just answering those questions demands a lot of expensive time and your costs are already rising.
So let’s do the maths on hours and the development costs of creating blog/microsite, mobile apps, online video, podcasts and then the crucial stuff of social media monitoring and assessment.
So for our hypothetical 12-month campaign for ACME Company we would need: account director for 15 hours a week at £150 an hour, account manager for 30 hours at £85 an hour, account executive on say £65 for 30 hours. Then we chuck in a blog/microsite and some mobile apps and maybe a few widgets – lets say the lot for £20,000. Then there’s the ongoing monitoring, engagement and evaluation for a conservative £30,000. That adds up to £400,000 for the year.
Maybe that’s a bit ambitious but even if you scaled it back to something more palatable – lets cut it in half to £200,000. Still the client is looking a bit green around the gills. But this is probably the same client who thinks nothing of booking a £70,000 page advertisement in the Daily Mail.
We would love to hear about other people’s experiences.
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Comments...
#1 Benjamin Welby
Reading this post with my local government hat on means my reaction is probably very different to others who have read it. And reading it as someone immersed in the social web probably informs my response too. And I caveat it by saying I’ve no experience of ‘real-world’ comms costs and how this might manifest itself.
So, on the basis that I might be about to talk rubbish let me explain why I think I disagree. Obviously the greatest myth of all is that social media is free. And I fully agree that there are costs associated with it, particularly in setting things up and understanding why you’re doing it. Plus, if you’re going to pay someone to strategise for you and monitor it and all the other things that must form part of using it then the cost will begin to stack up.
But that seems to miss the point of what’s going on when using social media? By paying others to do that listening and engagement it becomes another form of broadcast that ultimately leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. The best uses of socmed are the ones that are really real - the blogs speak from the organisation, Twitter is a dialogue, Facebook humanises what’s going on by making it less about just a product and more about a living and breathing entity.
And so I’m a bit uneasy about arms-length social media done for companies. Far better (although less lucrative) to equip companies with the knowledge and train them to use the tools and internalise the practices and the cultures that will realise the benefits of using it rather than offer a service to them and run it for them?
Maybe it’s different when we’re talking about public money but we’d rather spend some time hunting out online tools, and aggregating them to try and listen to what’s being said so we can respond and make our services better rather than indirect engagement.
Maybe it’s a question of scope, we’re talking about a small part of the internet and a specific group of people so our horizons are always going to be less and therefore easier to manage? Thereby completely bypassing the need for a cost of that size?
#2 Ian Green
Ben,
I agree with every thing you say here - especially as it applies to the public sector. And in a ideal world the social media function of a local authority should be run by people within the LA, particularly those involved in the mar/comms function.
But many organisations remain either wilfully anti-social media or ignorant of its potential as a communications tool. This applies to the private sector too.
My definition of social media is “engaging in the conversation”. If you’re not engaged the conversation will still go on around you regardless.
I suppose the main point about our post is that in order to engage in that conversation organisations - public and private - must make a genuine investment in it if it is to be meaningful.