The Real Cost Of Social Media

Costs for social media projects, whether they are a short term campaign or a long term engagement strategy, tend to be under estimated.

Most agency will have heard something along the lines of “but it’s free to set up a Facebook Fanpage, right?”  from their clients. Right.So who’s going to manage the page? How will you keep track of its success? And taking a step further back, how are you going to get anyone to come to the page in the first place?

The infographic below highlights some of the key costs involved with any social media project. Whilst I would not take too much notice ofthe figures (they are heavily context dependant), it is interesting to see which areas companies are investing in.

What’s even more interesting are the numbers at the bottom of the infographic – where the compare the average spend of Facebook fans compared to non-fans for some of the top brands.

McDonald’s for example, see their Facebook fans spend more than double than non-Facebook fans. Interesting stats, although I’d be keen to see similar benchmarks for brands outside of the FMCG realm.

Hat tip – Focus