Social media was once seen by some marketers as a quick and easy way to reach consumers at their newest channel of choice. Advertising on the sites was relatively cheap, and marketing on the sites by creating a brand page or profile was free—it only cost internal time and resources.

But those resources can prove to be substantial, as many marketing professionals seem to have learned, based on a November 2010 survey by social media marketing solutions firm R2integrated. Asked what the biggest barrier to social media marketing was, more than two in five selected time and resources. Just half as many said questions about return on investment were as problematic.

Similarly, respondents cited the failure to allocate sufficient time and resources as their biggest mistake in social media marketing—worse than not having a strategy or not defining social media objectives.

“Most marketers understand the basic need to provide useful content to social spaces, but they aren’t able to keep up with the ongoing publishing demands, and don’t know how to manage conversations around their content within a community of interest,” said Matt Goddard, CEO at R2integrated, in a statement.

An October 2010 Meltwater Group survey of marketing decision-makers around the world also found a lack of time and resources to be the biggest challenge for respondents in using social media: 38% named that issue, compared with 30% who chose problems with measurement. And Econsultancy found nearly half of companies worldwide said a lack of resources was a barrier to engaging in social media more effectively, twice as many as complained of the difficulty in measuring success.

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Check out today’s other article, “Online Ad Spend Surpasses Newspapers.”