SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.
Last week’s poll question: What is your greatest concern regarding the use of social-media marketing?
- Time it takes to manage all points of engagement. 44.68%
- Its return on investment. 24.26%
- Daily volume of information; lack of content filtering. 21.28%
- Privacy concerns. 4.68%
- Time needed to learn about new tools/apps. 3.40%
- Cost to hire someone to manage it. 1.70%
One of the greatest concerns over the use of social media is the amount of time it takes to create proper engagement. If I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. Some automation systems do exist to help reduce the time investment. But the hard truth of the matter is that, if done well, social-media marketing takes time.
But, that’s not really the issue. Lots of marketing activities take time. (Many can be quite expensive, too.) The issue is whether the time required results in a reasonable return on the investment. Isn’t that the issue for any form of marketing outreach?
More and more, social media is proving its worth from a PR standpoint, as well as in generating revenue. Certainly, we’re still in the experimental stage with this young medium, but I contend that the more we work with it, the more efficient and effective our efforts will be.