This usually happens after a heated Board meeting where it is decided that their nonprofit should be “doing social media.” Then, an already over-extended individual is suddenly charged with getting 1000 Facebook fans, 5000 Twitter followers and 10000 new email signups, practically overnight.

This person might already be a volunteer, or may be part-time, struggling to finish all the other tasks required of them – writing grants, communicating with donors, organizing events and coordinating volunteers (just to name a few).

Social media is free. It only takes 5 minutes per day. After all, it’s just playing around on Facebook and tweeting. Right?

My thoughts emerging after this quote

This is quoted from J Campbell Social Marketing blog. And this scenario is quite common in the companies. With my previous employer I’ve been faced with similar situation. I had to “push” for advertising budgets and fight tooth and nail, to prove the point. If it wasn’t for the “Serbia” factor (lack of opportunities), I am not sure I would linger longer in such environment, not longer than I had to.

But it is a common theme, that once a company assigns person a role, they expect him to be effective at everything, as “social media is free”. If you came in 2007, it could have been free, but back than, you didn’t even know what Facebook is, and now you want to get the share of the advertising spoils?

Those are usually the same people that think SEO is free, and want you to rank their websites with 0 budgets, and no content development department.

When I worked in First Beat Media, I remember the teams of writers, who would exploding thousands of articles per week, that would be slammed in web 2.0 locations. That was a significant investment of time, energy and money into the single goal of gaming the Google results. And once you know with what kinds of beasts you are competing out in that market, you simply know that the companies that don’t invest a lot of money in good inbound content, simply stand no chance, against the armies of Black Hat companies who simply don’t care about Google terms of service, and their puny rules.

The only relevant question is, does it make me money, or it doesn’t?

For companies assuming that Internet is cheap marketing

Fast forward to 2013, this is not 2009, if you want to get results out of the web, you need a team of people: designers, developers, marketers and writers alike. This is not one man mission anymore, this is an industry. While one person can accomplish a lot, those will be in the end sub-par results.

It takes time, and continuous effort of passionate team. Otherwise competition will obliterate you into oblivion.