Good social media doesn't come cheap

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.