The Cost of Social Media
Written on September 5, 2008 by Susan Payton
Mike Manuel at Media Gorilla recently wrote a blog post called “Social Media Marketing Ain’t Always “Cheap.”" He raises some great points because people assume that using social media to market is free or cheap. While it’s on the polar opposite end of the cost spectrum from, say phone book advertising or a billboard, there are still some cost factors to consider.
Time.
Time is an often overlooked factor when it comes to the cost of marketing. While with an ad you essentially pay for an account manager or designer to do all the work, with social media, you have to put in your own time (or hire college kids from Craigslist). And if you’ve done any social media marketing (LinkedIn, Digg, YouTube, etc) you know it is a HUGE timesuck. (see my post on Twitter)
So before you decide social media is the cost-effective way to go in your marketing plan, figure out how much time you have to dedicate to it (or resources to pay someone else to do it).
I think, many people can see the value of money. They can see it when they are paying for advertising. Some people, however, cannot see time and they don’t value their own time. So they think social media is cheap advertisement, so they think they are getting things for free. But then again, if they are having fun doing it, then it’s not all work. Paying to have fun is a concept that’s not so foreign.
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