Facebook is free! Twitter is free! In fact all the Social Media networks are free. Great, so it’s not going to cost you a bean!  Or is it?

Well, it should if you want to do it properly. If it doesn’t, then you’re either not doing it right or your business has a problem as you’ve clearly got too much time on your hands!

To get things right with Facebook and Twitter, you need to devote some quality time to them. You need to spend time thinking, updating and interacting…

The same goes for any other social network you are on – and you should be on others. And yes, that means devoting even more time!

Most of all you need to be interesting enough to warrant a ‘like’, a ‘follow’ and, the biggest of them all, an ‘I’m going to keep on coming and I’m going to share it with my friends!’ (or something like that).

So where does the time come? Where do the thoughts come from;  the inventiveness?

You can start off genuine in your belief that you can keep on top of things properly. But you can fool yourself for only so long. Or you can think you have it covered off by delegating the responsibility to Jim …because ‘you know he’s on Facebook, so he must know what he’s doing’.

But if you really want to get it right (and you don’t want to know the pitfalls of getting it wrong), you do need to be a little more dedicated to it and a lot more true to yourself and your business. You need to be getting someone a little more in the know who is committed to it as part of their job.

What happens in America usually follows pretty soon in the UK. And in America right now, and already parts of the UK, it’s not unusual for companies to be employing people purely to manage their social media activity.

They’ve seen the power of the networks and recognised the potential. Most importantly they’ve realised very quickly that they haven’t got the manpower to cope within their present structure. But rather than trying to cope, and risk getting left behind, many businesses are taking someone on to fill the void.

Some are taking on students – http://mashable.com/2010/10/09/social-media-interns/ – but even a student doing 10 hours a week can be quite a costly affair (many in the article are looking at 20+ hours).

Outsourcing to a company like 2ndimpression can be a much more cost efficient way to achieve what a business needs and, unlike a fresh-faced student, can offer your business experience, expertise and a more long term stability factor.

To find out more about our Social Media Marketing services click here.