Mike over at MEDIA GUERRILLA shares some insight this morning about the high costs of doing business in places like Facebook and other social media outlets.

What caught my attention was this line:

And by “soft costs” what I’m really getting at are the *absurdly high* time and attention investments that typically come with these projects and what are the unique shared scars among many a social media practitioner. If you’ve ever administered a blog or a community of sorts, you’ll know what I mean, nuff said.

I had good success advertising with the Facebook Flyers program, despite most reports saying the conversion rates are pathetically low. My message and geographic group was extremely targeted though, which likely led to higher rates than a general ad campaign.

While I was able to generate some traffic on the cheap, what I hadn’t planned for was the impact the growth would have on my “behind the curtains” time. At the time, we were a 2-man shop and the impact was huge.

Lesson learned?

Managing a community site requires a lot of time on tasks that the community never sees. Tasks like:

Dealing with trolls
Fighting off spammers in the guise of new members
Making sure the CMS is configured to meet new demands
Troubleshooting login issues for customers using a crappy ISP (I’m talking to you, AOL)
Dealing with broken links.
Staying on top of the chatter for terms of service violations
Staying on top of the chatter for for new ideas.

...and the list goes on and on and on.

And that list doesn’t include the daily community massages required to keep things running smoothly (stimulating conversations, pointing people to resources, etc)

The amount of time allocated for good community management should never be underestimated—the set it and forget it mentality doesn’t apply. And because time and attention aren’t cheap, when you’re putting together your ROI for a project, you need to include the costs associated with hiring an experienced community manager.
You can read Mike’s full post here: Social Media Marketing Ain’t Always “Cheap”

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I stumbled across TurnHere in June of ‘06 and immediately connected with the high-quality production values of the local, local, local content. TurnHere offers more than just an online video ad - they present a picture of the business - the story behind the sales. And because it’s a story about a business in the community (and not some faceless corporation hawking goods) people are more willing to listen.

It seems that some of the major players in the industry have recognized the same.

Cory Bergman writes this morning on Lost Remote that

Superpages.com has inked a deal with TurnHere and Denver Multimedia to create video profiles of local businesses.

The plan is to leverage the Superpages sales force to upsell clients to the video packages, and the clips will appear alongside directory listings. Recently, Yellow Book and CitySearch have begun similar video efforts.

He goes on to say…

local TV stations aren’t players despite long track records of innovation in video advertising. And in some cases, it may already be too late. Why? Stations haven’t invested in building innovative local directory/search products that have succeeded in achieving a large enough audience.

Last week, I met with a former co-worker who now heads up the interactive media group at a television station in Richmond. One of the topics we discussed was the failure of local television (and most of the media outlets in town for that matter) to honestly engage the online community in storytelling.

By not finding and sharing the stories important to the community, they’re doing a disservice to their next generation of audience, they’re leaving a lot of money on the table and they’re opening the door for low-cost, high-return competition.

It’s time for TV to innovate or die with regard to their online operations. Tossing up a couple of paragraphs related to the broadcast and links to weather doesn’t cut it anymore. People can and do get that content elsewhere. Short-form video storytelling is an art though - one that’s been practiced for decades by the TV reporters. It’s time to leverage those strengths and engage the local online community—before Superpages or anyone else does.

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