“ He said “I was selling in the idea that social media is free, until the community manager headcount came in.” This underscores a fundamental truth to social media that many organizations underestimate—being social means having real live people who actively participate in your initiatives. It’s difficult to automate and a challenge to scale, but it can also help move your business forward in ways that produce leveraged outcomes such as new/better products or services. The economics of using social media in business require the participation of people to fuel it. It is not simply enabled by technology that maintains itself.
