Planning and costing a social media project: activity template

Written 17.02.10 by: Jonathan Briggs

We get asked often what is actually involved with running a social media strategy and to help people understand we have put together what a typical year might look like in terms of projects, timescales and effort involved.

Here are some of our assumptions and notes:

1. The project outlined is not one for a actual client but illustrates the types of work we would expect to do for most clients. It assumes a multi-channel strategy including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the client’s own site.
2. The strategy investment must be front-loaded to allow for the channel setup on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and on the client site. Reporting and monitoring tools need to be chosen and installed.
3. The client will still be in charge of generating most of the content. We as an agency are responsible for the tempo and management of their strategy but they need to select the individual projects and actions.
4. There must be scope for changing the entire calendar as events occur and regular client meetings need to review progress. We have included a more formal report back against ROI every 3 months.
5. Time is split between discrete projects and on-going fan acquisition and management of the conversations. The figures below show only the agency work involved. A similar investment will be needed from the client.
6. The time quoted is in days and would be charged at a blended agency rate. Many different people would be involved including designers, developers, project and account management plus our strategy team.
7. The level of effort would of course depend on the client and on the budgets available. We believe that to be properly integrated within the overall client business (and generate significant ROI) the levels shown below represent the low end of what is possible.
8. For some clients the introduction of a social media strand to their ecommerce or visitor engagement project will be transformative and will require them to rethink both their existing sites and perhaps even their business
9. Key to the work involved is the generation of social value for the client and tracking and measurement are central to how we run these types of project.

Here is the document itself.

Planning a calendar of social media activities for a client (35 KB)

This document is a work in progress but provides a framework for planning a calendar of activities as part of the creation of a social media strategy for a client. It has been published to encourage feedback from other digital professionals and to demonstrate to clients some of the thinking that is necessary to address properly their social media and web presence.

If you use it in your own work or have suggestions for its improvement then please let us know.

We will be publishing further tools and articles regularly on www.othermedia.com.
Follow us @othermedia and @jonathanbriggs

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