Survey Says: 65 Hours Per Week for Social Media
March 30th, 2010
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
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
Creation 1-10 hours
Development 20-60 hours
Maintenance 5-15 hours/week
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.