The reason I like it Adam, is be it right or wrong in regard to numbers aligning with individual use cases, the consideration of “time spent” is a very valid one. You say “The fact that this consultancy sees it as the responsibility of one single person in the company or a single consultant shows almost a total misunderstanding of this.” I don’t think Jen ONLY considers social media as the responsibility of a single person, at all – but the reality is many companies do, and in fact won’t even ALLOW employees who aren’t “social media authorized” to communicate on their behalf or about them. I know a bit about that, we have one very big brand who is a client, who has these stipulations, and I have heard of hundreds of other companies using this approach. Obviously that is not the ideal approach to take, but people have to learn at their own speed.

Highlighting the reality of managing multiple channels even close to well, is the point I took from Cloudspark’s survey and why I found it interesting.

Maybe the problem is that Cloudspark is following the survey data for the “maintenance of a blog” – 5 hours a week. As you know, if you use that as a baseline, you are frankly setting yourself us for failure.

Even more interesting in the definitions, no where to be found – were “Writing, Editing, and SEO Optimization” probably the most IMPORTANT elements of a successful blog.

I could go on, but I won’t. I believe Cloudspark probably had good intentions, however as Jen says in her comment, they needed to “think further” on the subject to make it useful.

I appreciate the post linking back to our informal survey of SM practices. I’d be happy to send over the methodology and full results. I agree with your main point – this is merely a small survey of dedicated SM practitioners – with the intent of creating a better understanding of just how many hours it takes to create, develop and maintain various SM channels. Granted it varies by skill, scope, and goals, and this is why on the post you’ll see ranges of hours invested. This survey was not a university-backed full-fledged scientific effort: as we cearly state it’s a small effort on our part to help better understand the time those in social media invest in their efforts.

I’m glad you’ve challenged us to think further, and hopefully others will take on the full rigors of a more comphrehensive survey or in-depth study. Again, please let me know if you’d like to see more of the specific results or how we went about our informal survey. Certainly let me know if you see more scientifically-accountable efforts to better define social media budgets – we’re all for learning.

Regards, Jen