Having a social media strategy can be essential, unless that strategy is just to spend money. One government-sized example of this is how a Department of State bureau spent nearly $630,000 on Facebook “likes”, but it ultimately didn't do anything for them, according to the Washington Examiner on July 3.
Between 2011 and March of this year, the Bureau of International Information Programs spent hundreds of thousands of dollars just to increase their Facebook likes. The actual page likes did increase to over 2 million on their English page and 450,00 on the foreign language page. But the Inspector general, who investigated the spending when employees complained about “buying fans”, says that ultimately the “likes” do not translate into actual fans. They ended up not even hitting their target audience and now "only about 2 percent of fans actually engage with the pages by liking, sharing or commenting."
Ultimately, the Inspector General’s report noted their lack of overall strategy but also said that there are over 150 different social media accounts for the different State Department Bureaus. So the Department has been funneling money into social media kinda wily-nily hoping for a beneficial return. And while that was clearly a strategy that would never sustain itself, Facebook went ahead and made it even harder on them by introducing sponsored posts to the Newsfeed. Should the bureau continue with its “strategy”, it would now have to pay even more just to show up on newsfeeds of people who have already “liked” their page.
Now that the report is available, maybe the employees will switch their complaints from the ethics of “buying fans” to the seemingly fruitless use of government spending.
via Examiner National Edition Gadgets & Tech Channel Articles http://www.examiner.com/article/department-of-state-bureau-spends-630-000-on-fruitless-social-media-strategy?cid=roadrunner