41% of marketers say time & resources greatest barrier to social media use

A new study shows that lack of sufficient time and resources continue to present social media marketers with the biggest headache rather than lack of strategy or objectives.

The study from social media marketing solutions firm R2integrated in November 2010, shows that of those surveyed, more than two in five said that time and resources was the greatest barrier to social media marketing. Return on investment was also a concern.

The findings indicate that although companies in the first instance are attracted by relatively low initial costs of a social media programme, internal time and resources to maintain and monitor a company’s online presence is often under estimated.

Matt Goddard, CEO at R2integrated, quoted in eMarketer said “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.”

The demands of producing relevant online content to engage consumers, is not a problem that is going away soon, since consumer demand to engage with the content and share it with others continues to grow. However there could be an answer for the savvy marketer in 2011 according to another survey … 55% of companies outsource content marketing,