Hidden Costs of Social Media for Do-It-Yourselfers

Almost every company or business has a social media page and has had the dubious pleasure of trying to design it, implement that design and maintain the page over time. While social media for do-it-yourselfers can be rewarding and fun, it can turn into drudgery and eventually the page may fall into disrepair. That’s not good for business. Here are some hidden costs that you may incur if you perform your own social media duties.

Page Layout

The social media sites try to give you as many layout tools as possible to make your site attractive. While they are often quite useful and effective--as well as easy to use in most cases--they take time to choose, download and update. If you decide you like a layout and must have it but want a different color of font, you have to learn at least the basics of html to change it.

Also, you may want to have a specific design that includes your logo or photos of your product. That requires building a page from scratch, and if you are not well-versed in web languages this will be difficult.

Applications

You might want to take advantage of the many fun applications to keep in touch with your clientele. For instance, a little game that encourages participation and contact by having people create families or armies could be useful. However, games also need attention. If you start a game with your clients and they respond, you have to keep up with it--if you don’t, you will lose a little face.

Blogging

If you start a blog about your product or service you will have to maintain it. Like the games or activities, the people on your friends list will look for regular postings. If you are not much of a writer, this could be a real time sink as well as frustrating.

The Solutions

If you sincerely think a social media page is good for your business, you have a couple of options. Some companies hire a part time employee to maintain their pages and keep customers interested. To keep costs down, they often look for an intern at the local colleges and universities, but it’s hard to find someone with the design, writing, and coding education that you would need to fit the bill.

Other companies hire agencies to handle it. The great advantage of an agency is that you will get specialists in computer coding, design specialists who know what people respond to visually, and professional writers who understand marketing communications. It may cost a little more per hour than a part time web maintenance employee, but keep in mind the hidden costs of hiring and keeping people. You don’t have that with an agency.

So if you are faced with a choice of spending hours in front of the computer daily or abandoning your page, check out an agency first. You may be pleasantly surprised at the total cost, available talent, and end result.