It may surprise you that the headline on this blog post was “Social Media Doesn’t Work,” especially when you consider that I wrote a book called How to Make Money with Social Media.
The sad truth is that social media doesn’t work for the majority of companies that fall into the “you can do social media in 10 minutes a day” trap.
Trying to do social media in 10 minutes a day and ignoring it for the other 23 hours and 50 minutes a day is like trying to have a successful relationship with your spouse while ignoring him or her for 23 hours and 50 minutes a day.
Social media doesn't work if you try to do it in 10 minutes a day. In order for it to be effective, you'll need at least 25% of a full-time employee's efforts devoted to it.
Trust me, it doesn’t work.
The Secret to Social Media is to Use Social Media. When I make speeches on social media, one of the first questions I’m often asked is, “How much time should I devote to my social media campaign?”
The answer I give people is very specific. If you’re a small business with fewer than 10 people, you’ll need to devote 25% to 35% of a full-time employee’s efforts to social media.
If you’re a company with 11 to 100 people, you’ll need to devote 35% to 75% of a full-time employee’s efforts to social media.
And if you have 100 or more people in your company, you’ll need about 1 full-time employee devoted to social media for every 100 employees in the company.
Does All This Make Sense? You’ll probably agree that social media isn’t a playground for summer interns any more. It’s a real, viable marketing tool that’s every bit as important to your bottom line as your accounting department or sales department is.
If you’d like to take a deeper dive into social media metrics and measurement, you might enjoy reading How to Calculate the ROI of a Social Media Campaign (which I wrote for Mashable) or Setting Up a Social Media Campaign (which I wrote for the 60 Second Marketer).
Other Articles of Interest on the 60 Second Marketer
- Do You Have Facebook Fatigue?
- 15 Must Read Google Blogs for Social, Mobile and Digital Junkies
- Will Coca-Cola, Priceline, Volkswagon or Cars.com win the Super Bowl Commercial Wars?
The post above is adapted from the 60 Second Marketer e-newsletter. To see a sample of our free marketing e-newsletter, click here.
Posted by Jamie Turner, Founder of the 60 Second Marketer and co-author of “How to Make Money with Social Media” and “Go Mobile.” He is also a popular marketing speaker at events, trade shows and corporations around the globe.
