One of the realities of a growing or successful social media program is the more you do, the more sources are needed to create content, engage with customers, have conversations and build relationships.
The demand on your social media team may quickly be outstripped by the demands on their time. At some point, companies have to explore ways to handle and address a growing amount of activity.
It either means hiring more social media people or outsourcing to third-parties such as public relations agencies or contractors.
As a result, it means spending more money to operate social media programs – something many companies are reluctant to embrace given the current economic conditions and the need to remain lean and mean.
So what other strategic approaches can companies take to control their social media spending? One way to address this situation is extending social media activities to other employees as opposed to having everything handled by your social media team.
“Social media doesn’t scale, if you look at it as a single departmental unit responsibility.” Richard Binhammer, who heads up social media for Dell, said recently. “It only scales when you move away as a channel and look at it as a tool.”
Instead of having a small team, companies have a large team that will, hopefully, embrace social media as a logical extension of their jobs. It means more bang without spending any more bucks.
This means social media has to be well-ingrained within the corporate culture, and that employees have to be well-trained about how and when to use social media tools.
But it seems like a small investment relatively speaking to successfully scale social media.
