As awareness of social media grows, so does the budget that people are prepared to spend on it to reap its benefits. But how much should you spend?
This is a question we have been asked several times recently so I thought it was worth addressing. Let's be honest, we at Cosmic are going to suggest you allocate something for your social media as it is part of our business. However, we are true believers and have an active strategy in place ourselves as well as budget too.
Now, social media is free, or more accurately the platforms that you use to communicate generally are. So where is all this money being spent? The majority of it will be paying for someone's time. Whether you employ an agency or an extra member of staff to actually create the content, that person will need to be paid. Adding the responsibility to a current employee also means allocating some budget to it as they will still need paying; Don't forget to factor this in when working out your spend.
Other costs which you might incur could include software to manage the numerous platforms and the creation of original content too. Research is an often forgotten factor and we would highly recommend that time is spent carrying out analysis in to subjects which your audience (potential clients) will find not only interesting but useful too.
So, getting back to the original question, I think it is best that we talk in percentage terms as that relates better to everyone. In very flexible terms and from the research we have carried out, it seems companies are prepared to spend around 20% of their overall marketing budget on social media. Of course, it doesn't all have to come from the marketing budget, customer service also accounts for traffic via social media channels too, so make sure some of the money comes from that budget too.
If you have allocated a budget to your social media efforts, we'd love to know (in percentage terms of course) how much. Let us know in the comments below and please feel free to leave any other comments too.