SmartPulse — a weekly reader survey at SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers on social media practices and issues.
Last week's poll questions: What are your biggest concerns about using social media marketing?
- Managing all engagement points takes time. 44.68%
- Return on investment. 24.26%
- Daily amount of information. Lack of content filtering. 21.28%
- Privacy issues. 4.68%
- Time needed to learn about new tools and apps. 3.40%
- It costs money to hire people to manage it. 1.70%
One of the biggest concerns about using social media is the time it takes to generate adequate engagement. If you've heard it once, you've probably heard it a thousand times. Some automated systems exist to reduce time investment. But the harsh reality is that social media marketing, if done well, takes time.
But that's not the real problem. Many marketing activities take time. (Many are very expensive.) The question is whether the time required will provide a reasonable return on investment. Isn’t that a problem for all forms of marketing efforts?
Social media not only generates revenue, but is also increasingly proving its value from a PR perspective. Admittedly, this young medium is still in its experimental stages, but I would argue that the more we work on it, the more efficient and effective our efforts will become.
