Nearly a third of marketers claim they simply do not have the time to execute a social media strategy, according to a new study, which claims the majority are spending just an hour a week on the activity.
Red Rocket Media surveyed marketing professionals across a wide range of sectors and found that 32% of businesses cited ‘lack the time’ as their biggest social media challenge, closely followed by 28% who cited ‘creating original content’. Others included: deciding what to say (17%), measuring ROI (13%) and engaging with customers (10%).
“The results from this survey very much echo the message we are hearing from our own customers” said Matthew Hopkins, managing director of Red Rocket. “As businesses embrace social media, they are very quickly realising that to get results, you need to invest a serious amount of time in creating original content which will engage your readers: time, the majority of them just do not have.”
When asked about their main social media objective, 35% cited ‘increase brand awareness’, followed by ‘form deeper relationships’ (30%) and ‘generate leads’ (15%). Some 10% stated ‘increase website traffic’ as their main objective with the remainder being split between ‘enhance search engine rankings’ and ‘create buzz’.
Hopkins added: “More and more companies are cottoning on to the power of social media when it comes to increasing brand awareness. Valuable content, such as topic-related news, connects people and spreads like wild fire as people re-tweet it, share it and comment on it. As long as you publish high quality, original content, there are simply no limits to the reach your brand can achieve on social media.”
When it comes to the number of hours put it, more than 50% of those surveyed are now spending just 1-3 hours a week on social media activities, 17% are spending 4-6 hours and a surprising 15% are spending over 10 hours. As far as social media budget is concerned, 41% will be allocating more budget to it in 2012, compared to 49% who plan to spend the same.
Charlie says: While this survey was probably intended to get marketers to outsource their social media work, it does throw up an interesting conundrum – how do you squeeze in the time to build your strategy on the likes of Facebook and Twitter? As anyone who has ever embarked on a social media campaign knows, this is highly time-consuming. Gone are the days when most companies actually banned you from going on Facebook. Now it is part of many people’s jobs…and just another nail in the coffin for your lunchbreak.