Today we got on the subject of social media, and in particular – how I believe that many organizations and business are using it completely wrong. “Some groups, schools or businesses just sign up for all these social media sites, then proceed to forget about them and just leave them idle.”

My mom questioned “well, so what?”

So what? How about all the missed opportunities to provide a personalized face to your brand, organization or company? How about all the trust you could develop with your potential audience and customer base? How about all the missed chances to turn a frustrated and unsatisfied customer into a loyal brand supporter?

Being a retired public school teacher, my mom challenged with the fact that most schools are understaffed, and the teachers underpaid. “So they just don’t have the resources to do that stuff.”

Ok, valid point. Lets do some math.

Lets say we ask one teacher to spend 5 minutes a day just posting and responding to a couple messages on twitter and facebook. Lets keep their weekends free, so 5 days of 5 minutes is 25 minutes. lets round that up to 30 minutes.

Now lets say that we’ll hire this teacher to continue the social media “5 minutes a day” thing throughout the whole year. maybe spending less time in the summer months, but would balance out for high workload weeks during the school year. 30 minutes a week for 52 weeks, that’s 26 hours.

I asked my mom what a fair wage would be for a teacher who takes on a coaching position, or leadership with another extracurricular activity group and she estimated $25/hour. So 26 hours at $25/hour is $650/year.

Now in the case for this being a teacher at a private or parochial school. If that social media campaign helps ONE student decide on choosing that school, you have more than paid for that $650–and in some cases–you just made tens of thousand dollars.

So is 5 minutes a day too expensive? You better believe it’s not.