There are still some companies whose decision makers think that social media marketing can be done on the side. But finally a lot of them have now realized that this is absolutely not possible, because it takes a lot more time than most people expect. Social media costs one thing above all: time!

We have summarized the three keywords for effective social media marketing:

1. Planning

• analysis (target group, competitors, etc.)
• suitable social media channels 
• action concept

  

2. Implementation

• content creation 
• community management 
• integration of social media activities into the company's marketing mix 
• editorial support 
• internal communication & coordination

  
  

3. Evaluation and control 

• selection & initiation of suitable monitoring programs 
• collection of customer feedback/market research
• development of key figures to measure success -Review of target achievement
• derivation of measures for improvement

Especially during the implementation a lot of time gets lost. The infographic from Gigaom serves as a guide for the time investment in social media marketing and underlines that companies should invest around 20 hours a week at least in their social media marketing. The implementation is here separated in six parts:

Listen: 1h 15mins per week 

Following conversations on social media and especially conversations in your own industry.

Promote: 1h 40mins per week 

Promoting and sharing content from other accounts.

Participate: 2h 30mins per week

Participate in discussions, reveal own opinions and record dialogues.

Create: 3-5h per week

Research, content/social media post creation

Build Community: 5-10h per week

Generate fans and followers.

Of course, the time required cannot be generalized, as it depends on a number of factors. For example, on the amount of content that is posted, the different channels and whether tools are used.

With Mate, for example, you can save a lot of time in the implementation part. You can use it to speed up the brainstorming process by getting lots of ideas for new content. Also the part of content creation can be shortened by Mate, because you don't have to do hours of pixel work, but have a huge selection of easy to use templates! Here, instead of 5 hours of content creation time per week, you'll quickly need less than half of that!