Rose Mary Moegling, Toshiba America Medical SystemsWith the rise of social media comes an increase in budget for social spending. Brand communicators predict an average uptick of 40% in social spend for 2013, according to the recently released Technorati Media 2013 Digital Influence Report.
The bulk of brands’ overall digital spend now goes to display ads, search and video, with spending on social, including influencer outreach, making up only 10% of their total digital spend. Within their social budget, more than half goes to Facebook, followed by YouTube and Twitter, with the remaining 11% of their social spend going to blogs and influencers.
PR News was curious how these data points lined up with other communicators’ social budgeting strategy, so we asked a couple of in-house communicators for their insights.
At Toshiba America Medical Systems, Rose Mary Moegling, manager of social media, says YouTube and Twitter will get the most resources, but there are plans to become more active on LinkedIn in 2013. “We budget for content creation of collaterals, videos and other items and use those materials for our social media efforts,” Moegling says. A “significant portion” of the budget is used for research and measurement. “The more resources we can put into this, the stronger our program will be,” she says.
Asked how communicators could be more cost effective with their social resources, Moegling says job one at Toshiba America Medical Systems is to repurpose content in as many ways as possible, maximizing the impact of each and every activity. For example, the communications team creates video testimonials each year about the programs it does with two industry partners.
“These videos are placed on our website, on YouTube, used in our tradeshow booths and shared on Twitter,” she says. The team does the same with case studies, press releases and other content created to promote these programs.
Meanwhile, at Texas Instruments, Joy Hays, the company’s worldwide manager of digital and social media communications, gets more out of her social budget by starting with the end of a social campaign in mind, which allows her to focus on what is needed to get the goal accomplished, rather than the “nice to have.” “For example, if you are focused on awareness, one thing in social you should concentrate on increasing the number of shares,” Hays says.This year TI is focusing its social ad spend budget on Twitter (9%) 4% on LinkedIn (4%) and 2% each on Facebook and Google+.
If Hays experienced a social budget windfall, she would love to set a fund strictly to try new tools or experiment with emerging social platforms. “It takes experimentation, constant testing and refinement to create something that resonates with the audience,” she says. PRN
Catch Moegling and Hays presenting at the PR News Big 3 Digital PR Conference, set for April 18 in NYC (prnewsonline.com/events/big3april18).
CONTACT:
Rose Mary Moegling, [email protected]; Joy Hays, [email protected].
