The biggest catch to social networking for business was that it was “free”. Creating profiles and accounts was free and, because socialising on the net wasn’t considered a skill yet, anyone on the team could do it when they had a spare moment, without it incurring an extra cost.

A few years down the line as social networking has begun to pay off, companies are starting to realise that doing it properly has never really been “free”. To create a strategy, develop the content and monitor and engage in conversations, someone has to invest time and energy into it.

Move forward a few more years and big companies have dedicated in-house or outsourced teams to manage their content on social buzz sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and they like.

And, as is the nature of competitive marketing, the more popular the channel becomes the more expensive it will be to get noticed, to get results. To put it into perspective, one statistic says that each day, every minute, there are 48 hours of YouTube video uploads, 571 new websites added and 2 million Google searches conducted. How much are you willing to pay for your share of the social networking limelight?

Making The Content

So is it worth writing your own content, or buying something cheap purely for the purpose of getting lots of words on your web pages or filling your social networking channels with “stuff”? Funnily enough, no. The research also shows that 90% of web traffic is channelled by 10 to 20% of its content. Sometimes it pays off to invest in quality over quantity.

It is something of a triumph for copywriters, because the focus of electronic communication at many agencies to date has been design and aesthetics.

Promoting The Content

As the amount of eligible content available increases, companies can expect to pay a little more to appear in news feeds. Promoting the content is going to be a little more expensive, but if you are investing more time and effort into fewer content pieces, you can balance the budget out.

Also remember that as page followings grow, increasing your reach is going to become more expensive too.

So how can you offset the increases? Make sure you have a plan and clear objectives for your social networking strategy. If you’re going to be spending, you need to be sure of a return.

Do you need help getting a return on your social networking strategy? Please get in touch with us.