We get a lot of questions about how much time and budget to allocate to social media. Questions like: “What percentage of the mix do we need to invest?” or “Can I have my PR person just add this to their job?” It seems that while nearly everyone is starting to understand the value of social media, not everyone fully understands the costs.

Here’s what we know: It takes at least 65 hours a week to maintain 4 social media channels for 1 brand.

While social media channels are considered “free,” the time you need to create, develop, and maintain those channels is anything but free. In fact, from our survey of social media practitioners, it can take quite a bit of time – for an average brand it takes 65 hours on average to maintain 4 social media channels at any given time.  For the math challenged, that’s a full time job for 1.5 people.

How’d we get the numbers? This spring we surveyed nearly 40 SM practitioners and asked about their hours invested in social media for their brands or the brands of their clients.  In our survey, we defined the following: creation means setting up the page with initial content (does not include creative design team hours); development means attracting followers, initial promotion/launch; and maintenance means listening, responding, posting, messaging, inviting. The average ranges depended on the potential for the community size, initial promotional pool, campaign goals, etc.

Here are what the surveyed practitioners spend on social media for a single brand:

Planning

Social Media Research  8-25 hours

Social Media Planning   10-20 hours

Blog

Creation                      10-15 hours

Development                40 hours

Maintenance                5 hours/week

LinkedIn

Creation                       1 hour

Development                 5-15 hours        

Maintenance                 3-10 hours/week

Facebook (Fan or Group Page)

Creation                       3-12 hours

Development                10-50 hours

Maintenance                 7-15 hours/week

Ning

Creation                        1-10 hours        

Development                  20-60 hours

Maintenance                  5-15 hours/week

Twitter

Creation                        1 hour

Development                 15-40 hours

Maintenance                 3-7 hours/week

YouTube (branded channel)

Creation                        3 hours

Development                  5-20 hours

Maintenance                  2-7 hours/week

Flickr Pool

Creation                        1 hour

Development                  5-30 hours

Maintenance                  2-10 hours/week

For those of you that are fully engaged and invested in social media channels, I’m sure you’re not surprised, right? Social media done well requires a time investment. It’s a free channel with a real cost and has the potential for tremendous value if you invest the time. Tell us how many hours you’re investing in social media each week. And if you’d like a copy of the survey, email us.

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As part of the planning process, we always talk about the issue of social media budgets before we start with a single tweet, post, comment, or video. Sure social media channels are free, but to create, develop and maintain your brand’s efforts, consider these 8 questions before you get started:

1. What is/are our goal/s in social media?
2. What social media channels make the most sense for your goal/s? 
3. Do you have staff already available to enter into social media? 
4. Will any staff need training in social media? If yes, how many hours of training will be required? 
5. Who will develop your social media channels? 
6. Who will maintain your social media outreach? 
7. Who will develop and who will track your results within social media? 
8. How much time can realistically be allocated to social media each week/month?

What do you think? What questions might you add to build your social media budget?

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