This post is the first of a series I have written providing some help and advice to answer the question: How much will social media cost me? Make sure you read the full series – ‘Social Investment’.

If I had a $ or £ for every time I’m asked the question: “How much will it be every month?” Followed quickly by: “What do I get for that?” Well, I would have a house paid for in Portugal next door to Sir Cliff Richard.

While I’m happy to answer the question(s) – I still think there are misperceptions of what investing in social media for your business looks like.

In order for business owners and indeed marketing managers to be able to assess the resources needed for fully embracing this brave new world – there’s more they need to know.

In this post I hope to give you the ‘structure’ of what “investment” looks like when taking on social media as part of your business plan and of course marketing and communications strategy.

As we are an agency and work exclusively with business owners / managing directors or in-house marketing managers – we are speaking from experience here. More often than not, the time, money and human resource that goes into ‘doing’ social media properly is severely underestimated.

I hope, by helping you to become a more enlightened or educated buyer…you are in a better place to not only plan and recruit properly – but you will also be better prepared when looking for outside help (like from an agency or consultant). The beauty of being more educated on this subject also means you will have a much better likelihood of actually achieving what you set out in your business plan.

Let’s get started…

There are four areas which require investment of time, money, people, energy and skillset. In this post I am going to give you the highlights of each of these areas. If you are a detail person – I’ve also deep dived into each of these and written more on them. Just click on any one of these below to go into more depth on the topic.

1. Strategy

This is the most crucial step to really harnessing the power of social media and indeed digital.  Start with the end in mind as the lovely Mr Stephen Covey would say. The old adage of ‘Fail to plan, plan to fail’ holds true here.

Because there are so many moving parts to a digital marketing strategy, it is important to take a step back and bring your strategy in line with the business’ objectives. Too often, in the heat of ‘busy-ness’, the reason why you are doing what you are doing gets lost in the daily struggle.

If you frequently find that you or your team have lost the will, or run dry on ideas, or are chasing shiny objects (new social media platforms or apps) and things feel, just frenetic at best…my guess is that you do not have a strong ‘why’ holding it together. In other words a thought-through strategy or plan. Or…you do…and you haven’t revisited it often enough to check that it is up to date.

Read my detailed post ‘Invest in a Strategy’. It gives you tips of who should be involved, how long it takes and how much it costs to do (in time and money – if you get an outside agency to help you).

2. Content Creation

Until machine learning reaches the marketing sphere in a more commercially available way – meaningful content creation will be a heavily a human based activity.

Yes, you can sign up to tools that claim to repurpose your content for $10 a month, or create images for you for $0.99 a piece. But – the reality is, at this point in time, that there is no replacement for humans. And humans take time, and they cost money.

We are always advocates of our clients trying to build their in-house content creation skills (video shooting, casual photography, blog writing, etc) – but ultimately this collateral needs to be crafted into engaging content.

With a strategy in place which also covers identifying target audiences and putting a content plan together – content creation becomes a guided exercise (not a flurry of producing a lot of nonsense to fill a newsfeed.

Remember – you only get an engaged, loyal audience – if you take the time to get to know what they want to see from you, and then you give it to them. I think I can best describe underestimating content creation by saying that it’s like expecting to win the London Marathon by making sure you walk 30mins a day with your dog. Disjointed thinking right? Exactly.

Read my detailed post ‘Content Creation Sweat’. It gives you an idea of who should be involved in content creation, what it entails and what different types of content there is. I also give you some tips on tools to provide your team with, so that they can do the job and of course an idea of cost.

3. Skilled Admin

Much like content creation above, the amount of time spent administering your social media strategy is extra-ordinary. While some less informed folk will think social media is a dalliance and involves taking pretty pictures, slapping on a hashtag and then going for lunch (where you take more pictures of your food and share them on Instagram) – it really isn’t.

Co-ordination, multi-tasking and monitoring a multitude of metrics and aspects daily is a little closer to the truth. The admin time is largely dismissed in the scheme of things – but it’s a very necessary part to maintaining your consistency in ‘showing up’ for your audiences, and staying relevant.

While strategy and content creation are crucial, the administration of how these two display themselves across social media means that your admin and systems need to be spot on.

Now – this isn’t just any admin. (Hence the title). I have seen many a VA who ‘help’ their clients with social media make this mistake. Truly monitoring and administering your social media implementation isn’t just a matter of ticking a box of doing a task, posting content and possibly running a report each month.

Read my detailed post ‘Administering Your Social Media’ where I go further on explaining how there is much more that goes into maintaining your social media plan and keeping it in ship shape.

4. Proactive Community Management

This is the part where you spend time interacting with your online communities. Unlike other marketing avenues – social media really is all about dialogue – a two-way conversation. This means that it is not a ‘set and forget’ situation.

Your following on Facebook, Twitter or other platforms are, in fact, a highly charged space of conversation and action. While it is smart to schedule planned content, it is very important that you have someone in-house who is taking the time to comment, share and converse with the audiences.

As an agency, we have taken the view that this proactive element is not something that should be outsourced. Only you and your team know your products or service inside out – and are best placed to respond to customer questions, queries and comments.

Read my detailed post ‘Community Management’ where I give you an idea of what these tasks look like and expectations on length of time to attribute to it.

Need help?

Would you like some help assessing where you are spending your resources when it comes to content marketing and social media?  Read more here about our strategy session and/or book a free 30min conversation with me and let’s see where I can help. (Check my diary here).

Read more of our Strategy posts.

Looking for another social media topic?  Make sure you check our our full series of social media blog posts.