Tumbling Along With Me

Disclaimer… I am an unabashed fan of Danny Brown. I am a long time reader of his blog and chat with him online from time to time and even though we’ve never met face to face, I consider Danny to be a friend.

I am a big believer in what Danny is saying here… as marketers, we overload our content in order to sound like an expert and make it impossible for our message to stick with consumers.

I’ve already said too much already (at least by Danny’s standards :) ), but what I love most about this e-book is that Danny quickly makes his point and then goes on to prove it with his excellent, bite sized posts.

• Social media strategist: 10 hours per week @ $100 per hour = $1,000 per week. Total for 52 weeks – $52,000.
• Community manager: 30 hours per week @ $60 per hour = $1,800 per week. Total for 52 weeks – $93,600.
• Micro-site build (if not using existing platforms) – $15,000.
• Mobile application (more than 70% of web browsing is via mobile phone) – between $20,000 and $150,000 depending on functionality.
• Ongoing moderation and measurement using third-party specialists – between $30,000 and $80,000 depending on frequency.
• Total = $390,600.

Now I’ve given you worse-case examples, since you won’t need a social media strategist for the whole time during the campaign. You might only need a community manager half the time mentioned above. You can also build micro-sites for less; the cost will depend on how interactive you want the site to be.

But even if you halve the total cost used in my example above, you’re still looking at $195,300. Almost $200,000 for a year-long social media campaign.

Danny Brown takes a step back from his theme of community to take a hard look at the costs of a proper Social Media Campaign. You can certainly argue the costs that Danny has proposed. I also think that most businesses tend to ease into the space rather than jump in this deeply, but you cannot argue the point. The cost of Social Media Sites might be free, but the people who really know how to make a difference and impact your bottom line are not. Give the article a read by clicking the link above!