Social Media Budgeting: Where Do You Start?
 Guest
article by Shannon Suetos
from
Resource Nation
The terms social media and social networking have been tossed around for quite some time
now, but businesses are struggling with how to implement these strategies in
their budgets. How much is too much, how much is too little? There are many
factors on how to plan a budget, and the same goes for social media.
A
study
done by Econsultancy and bigmouthmedia has found that of the, “companies (86%)
[they] surveyed plan to spend more money on social media in 2010, and a further
13% are planning to keep the same level of budget.” With that being said, it
seems the biggest struggle for companies is not that they don’t want to spend
the money, but they don’t know what to spend it on.
Credit: TW Collins
The good news
is
many social media outlets are free. Yes, there are programs you can purchase
to help manage your accounts and are necessary for some social networking
efforts, but for the most part it’s free to sign up on these sites.
Time
The main cost
is how much time you are going to dedicate to your social media campaign.
Someone has to put into action your ideas, and they most likely aren’t going to
work for free. When writing up your budget make sure you take into account the
time your employee(s) are going to be dedicating to this new project.
You also need
to take into account if you need to hire someone to run your social media
efforts. With the social media industry becoming more popular, there are many
people out there claiming to be social media gurus. There are plenty of quality
people in the industry who know what they are doing, but make sure you are
getting someone with enough background in social media that makes you
comfortable.
Monitoring
Once you have
set up who and how much time will be spent on social media, the next step is to
decide how you are going to monitor everything. These analytical tools come in
all shapes and sizes and the cost varies from application to application—and in
some circumstances are free.
If you are just
getting your feet wet, it is a good idea to start small and then grow. See how
effective your efforts are before going full blast. You need to know where your
target audience is engaging. If your customers are mostly on Twitter and you
aren’t there how will they get your message? Play around with the different
social networking sites and figure out which sites are best for your company.
Time will
tell
Once you have
done some research and dabbled in the different social networking you should be
able to get a feel of what tactics work for your company and what don’t. After
you get a better feeling for where your key audience is participating with you,
you can then
focus your efforts and better know how to manage your time and
money.
Shannon
Suetos is a writer based in San Diego, California. She writes extensively for an
online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing
decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as
postage meters
&
postage scales
at
Resource Nation.
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