Sure, social media marketing doesn’t cost as much as a minute of Super Bowl advertising, but marketers appear to be vastly underestimating its expense.

Econstituency vice president Rebecca Lieb says 32 percent of marketers who responded to the e-commerce advisory firm’s recent survey said they spend nothing on social media, according to “Live from SES NY: Marketers Claim Social Media Doesn’t Cost a Dime” by Tim Parry on Multichannel Merchant. Lieb theorizes that respondents consider dollar figures to equal the amount of money spent, and are not accounting for resources such as the manpower that go into having a social media presence.

And they are using social media. More than four-fifths – or 86 percent – report marketing on Facebook, while 77 percent are tweeting and 58 percent are using LinkedIn, says Leib.

The SSN take: Either the accounting departments have not caught up with the marketers, or someone is really trying to make social media use look cost efficient. Neither is good business.

John Sniffen, April 22, 2010

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