How to find time & money for social media marketing?
Well this blog is going to show you how you could save 10 hours a week and £10,000 a year
“I just haven’t got time for social media”
It’s one of the most common statements I hear from business owners and employees
Sometimes it’s valid and their time is spent productively elsewhere. Other times it’s an excuse
It’s why in this blog we’re taking a deep dive into Resourcing Social Media: How To Find Time & Money For Social Media Marketing
We’ll be asking the questions Is Social Media Marketing Free? How Much Time Do You Need To Spend On Social Media Marketing? Where else can you save time from to resource your social media marketing ? Where else can you save costs from to help fund social media marketing ?
And after all this we ask you to make data informed decisions. Every business is different and what works for myself, might not work for you, but by looking at the data you’ll know
Is Social Media Marketing Free?
Many business owners perceive social media to be a free tool to market their business, but make no mistake social media isn’t free
Marketing Managers are often on a £30,000 a year salary and a percentage of their time will be dedicated to social media marketing
If a junior member of staff has been trained on social media they could be dedicating 10 hours per week to social media and content production. £100+ a week on the National Living Wage
And then there’s the associated expenses such as professional photography, graphic design, copywriting and so on. All of these play a part in the social media marketing mix and as well as having a social media manager you should be bringing in experts to help with their specialist knowledge
So is social media free? No way
How much time do you need to spend on Social Media?
We did an extensive blog on this question which you can read here, but in an ideal world
Blogging – 2.5 hours
Other Content Production – 4 hours
Posting / Scheduling – 2 hours
Engagement – 7.5 hours
Audience Building – 1 hour
Analytics / Reports – 1 hour
Total = 18 hours
A lot of smaller businesses / organisations are going to have to compromise on the above
They simply don’t have the staff resources for 18 spare hours a week for social media
They simply don’t the budget to outsource 18 hours a week to a social media company
But they can do 4-8 hours a week and Social Media Training can help identify where to spend their time
And if 4-8 hours really is not possible due to time constraints then outsourcing some / all of social media is a really cost-effective option
Get the most out of the time you have
And now you know all of the above we’re going to drill down on this
Resourcing Social Media: How To Save Time & Money With Social Media
Time Audit
A time audit is to simply keep a log of your time
On a personal level you might tell yourself you don’t have time for the gym each day, but spend 2 hours watching Fifa each day. A time audit therefore would tell you that you can still play an hour of Fifa each day and spend 1 hour in the gym. You can do both
A time audit for business is a log of where you’re spending time on your business and then analysing whether that time is well spend or whether time can be saved anywhere
As I write this blog we’re just heading up to a second lockdown, which makes people assess and re-evaluate how they’re spending their time
1. Meeting / Travel Times
Before lockdown 90% of the meetings I had were tagged on to the end or the beginning of a networking meeting
As a non driver I’ve been well versed in time efficiency
As lockdown happened people suddenly started to realise all those meetings they spent 2 hours travelling for a 30 minute conversations could be done over Zoom
And when people got zoom fatigue they realised “why do meetings that could have been emails”
Be honest with yourself – most meetings don’t need to happen, they’re in place to make you feel like you’re doing something productive
Time Saving: If you have more than 1 meeting a week and you half it – you’ve just saved 2+ hours week on travelling and having the meeting
2. Networking
Unless you run a networking group, you do not need to attend more than 1 or 2 networking events a week
I know people who attend a networking event every single day and apart from being “present” what are they getting out of it?
Don’t get me wrong networking works and it builds your business, but you don’t have to say yes to every email invite to a networking event
Try a few, pick and choose the ones that attract your ideal customers, find a format that works for you, ones that allows you to network as well as listen to a guest speaker and a group where people support you on social media and offline as well as just turning up
Once you’ve found your key events you’ll suddenly find that you spend a lot less time networking for networking sake
Time Saving: 3-4 hours a week
3. Phonecalls
“It takes 12 touchpoints to make a sale”
You’ve probably heard various stats along those lines ranging from 8 touchpoints to as high as 40 touchpoints
To many this means sales calls, sales emails and more
To less people it means education via social media and blogs
And yet more and more people are doing their research on who they’ll buy from before even getting in touch
If you can educate people on social media, blogs, podcasts and videos so that when it comes to phonecalls the phonecall is simply “We’ve done our research and want to buy from you” then it’s job done
Time Saving: Limitless
4. No Strategy
Social Media without a strategy is like going to a gym and not knowing how to use any of the equipment
You might get a few lucky breaks and you might see the odd result here and there, but you’ll waste a lot of time by not knowing what you’re doing and why you’re doing it
If you’re just starting out on social media or you’re reassessing your social media then you should look at your social media strategy
These are the overarching plans than lead and help inform the individual tactics you employ on a daily / weekly / monthly basis
When you know your why you start to approach social media with a specific purpose and every interaction is meaningful, every minute spent is productive
Time Saving: Limitless
Expenses Audit
Now we’ve looked at saving time on Social Media I want to look at the expenses saved by using social media
People who don’t tend to use social media tend to invest more time and money in other areas of business and you’ll see this below
1. Coffees
On average, Brits visit a coffee shop 152 times a year, costing £13.85 each time. £2210 a year. Wow!
Think about that for a while and then think how many coffees you have for business
“You can’t have a coffee with me to pick my brains”
It’s one of my rules of business and when people are selling professional services you should respect that they don’t give an hours worth of free advice for a £2.50 cup of coffee
I always tend to make most of my meetings directly before or after networking meetings to save time as well
And in this currently climate most meetings are now taking place virtually anyway which takes out the coffee shop or hotel bar meetings
Cost Saved: £2210 a year
2. Networking Memberships / Events
Networking works as I’ve said above, but the people that tend to have staff members in 4 or 5 groups can be paying £500+ per person for independent groups and £1000 per person a year for BNI
And then there’s often parking costs if in a city centre and weekly breakfasts costs
If Networking is delivering a solid gold ROI then it’s an investment that works, but can you genuinely say it works for you?
There are many free to attend groups out there as well which have worked very well for us over the years
Cost Saved: £1000
3. Printed Media
Business Cards, stuff for the Bumf table, magazine adverts
If I told you in 11 years of business the only paid printed marketing I’ve done is my business cards; a handful of flyers / posters for workshops; and a pop up banner. That probably wouldn’t surprise you with my field
My total printed marketing budget over those 11 years must be less than £300-400
I suspect yours could be 3, 4 maybe even 10 x higher than that with ease – you could spend that in one week if you use print marketing in the local newspaper
Why don’t I spend huge amounts on print? Well, I simply don’t need to with leads and sales from social
Cost Saved: Up to £5000 a year
4. Expo’s
Expo can be costly and unpredictable
One year an event can be a huge success and then the next year it can be a costly disaster
And to be honest we won’t see any expos until next year at the earliest
This creates a huge opportunity for businesses to look at how much they spend on expos each year and syphon off some of that budget for long term brand building on social media
And when the opportunity arrives again to get face 2 face you have the combined powerhouse of social media with expos
Cost Saved: £2000-£5000 a year
AND NOW FOR DATA INFORMED DECISIONS
Now is the time to make data informed decisions on How To Find Time & Money for Social Media Marketing
Everything I’ve written above comes from a position of bias. Informed bias, but bias all the same
I run a social media company, but prior to this I was a journalist and events organiser. Everything that I’ve ever spent time on or spent money on has been informed by data and measured results
Now you need to do the same
Look at the actual data and stats and measure what works or doesn’t work out of Social Media, Networking, Print, Expos, Meetings and so on
Can you resource your social media by cutting out timely and costly elements from other aspects of marketing?
There are areas you could shave 10 hours a week and £10,000 a year above – think about it
Have you got any time on How To Find Time & Money for Social Media Marketing?
NEED HELP WITH YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA?
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Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
