The Real Cost of Social Media

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest… But how much does it actually cost a business. This is not going to be a post about how you need to be using Social Media or why it will help your business. That ship has sailed. The point of this post is just to give an overview on the actual cost Social Media has on a business.

You likely don’t have the time to manage your social accounts yourself. You will need around several hours a month spare to manage a single Social Platform as well as the constant support needed to answer any questions your customers may have. Because Social Media is instant people expect a reply, if you’re not active then you could be losing valuable sales.
So you have two options; hire someone to manage your social media.

Let’s say you hire someone to manage your social account, they will likely need training before they start, depending on their existing knowledge this will cost around £1,000 – £2,000. On top of that you have software costs with a minimum of $9.99/mo if you’re using a basic platform like Hootsuite. Then add the actual cost of employing someone 40 hours a week, £1000pcm minimum, all of a sudden you have a huge cost just to run your social accounts, that’s without including any promotions or ads you may want to run on top! This is just a rough guide but you can see how prices can mount up.

Second option… Outsource. So instead of having one employee run your accounts, you have a whole team of professionals continuously monitoring your accounts, posting on your behalf with engaging content. You don’t need to worry about an employee being off sick or going on holiday, an agency is always there. But the main benefit is that when you get negative comments, and you will… If not handled correctly it can damage your company’s reputation, and the experience of an agency is priceless in these situations.

This posts is not supposed to be a heavy sales blog about why you should outsource your social media to us, if you want to that’s great! But the main point is simply to educate businesses and save you money. That’s the bottom line, it’s not about if you should be using social media, it’s about how you are using it. If you can do it yourself and it works then brilliant but a lot of the time you will save time and money by outsourcing. If you’ve got any questions give us a call on 01908 231230 or message us on Social Media.