I found an infographic last week and it really drove home a point that I wanted to share with you today: Social media marketing takes time. This is especially true if it is done correctly. Consequently, social media is not free…it never really has been.
The advent and acceptance of social media drove polarity among many would be social media “professionals “in the early years. Some (including me) felt that what the world needed were qualified individuals to go forth and educate and inspire businesses to get involved. Businesses were very interested and wanted to learn how to leverage these new and exciting tools and tactics. Necessity and demand spawned the never before imagined “social media consultant”.
Others believed that if social media was to ever be a real benefit to businesses it would need to be outsourced to professionals with extensive experience in the world of marketing. After all, these people make staying ahead of the curve their business and they understood how to develop strategy. Who better to implement tools and tactics to help you truly leverage this new and largely misunderstood potential marketing space?
Thankfully, the problem with the purist attitude and stance became clear to me pretty early. What I found was that as I checked the rear-view mirror to look in on my past clients…nearly 100% crashed and burned within 6 months of me handing over the controls. Of my peers who were candid with me, all reported seeing the same thing. I honestly believed these businesses would all be fine after a certain amount of training. Once social media was internalized and understood they would surely continue to fight the good fight, right?
Even worse than watching the crash and burn over and over again was an even more tragic observation. Social media gurus, experts, and companies were popping up all over the place. You saw it…you could barely hide from the “Twitter 101 for Business” classes on every corner. The majority of these under-qualified opportunists were (and still are) charlatans. The social media “help” industry was born and the business model was thriving because it preyed on the fear and ignorance that many business owners were experiencing.
I set out to find and fix the reasons that businesses didn’t seem to “get it”. I found only two factors that contributed to the failures I was witnessing:
- Social media marketing takes too much time. For businesses this time is better spent doing the things that they do best. Trying to become a professional marketer AND run your business is beyond overwhelming for most.
- Social media changes far too fast to keep up with. The only way to keep up is to invest even more time…like, all of your time.
So it boils down to time. The infographic below drove this point home beautifully because they divide up social media marketing tasks into a 40 hour week. It is likely that you don’t have an extra 40 hours a week to dedicate to social media marketing. This is one of the reasons we built TrustWorkz®. We’re here to help you close the marketing/technology loop if you need our help. Contact us today and someone will be happy to discuss the possibilities with you!
