5 Things to Consider When Factoring the Cost of Social Media

I stumbled across this infographic while reading through my post feed this morning. The information is brought to you by Focus.com (full infographic) and explains different stats and ideas for factoring the cost of social media in your organization.

I wanted to pull out the top 5 tips from the infographic to better explain the concept of factoring cost into your social media usage.

1. External advertising other than “build it and they will come” is necessary when factoring in the cost of a social media campaign. Social media being free because it is just “time” is false. The organization has to invest in other avenues to strengthen social media.

2. Tracking your use of social media is extremely important and will take some hard cost to develop. Many monitoring tools are free but they do not provide the value of Raven Tools or Radian 6.

3. Facebook Fans are 28% more likely to spend again with a brand. They have loyalty.

4. Facebook Fans are 41% more likely to become an advocate for your brand.

5. Are you outsourcing your writing and content development for social media? You have to factor in the continuing cost of running social media through an outside firm. Does it makes sense to outsource because you would “rather not do it” or should you up-the-ante and start building out the system for internal development?