What do you charge? Running business Twitter account

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I'm a freelance journalist and increasingly asked about running clients' Twitter accounts. I have resisted up until now, but I'm now at the point where I think I need to consider it. I know it would be good to use automated posting tools - but I have 2 key questions:

1. How much time does it take (eg 2-3 posting a day)
2. How much do people charge for doing this?

All signposts/insights appreciated!

With social media management you can organise your posts for days in advanced with hootsuite. As I understand it though managing social media is a lot about interaction as well. So retweeting and getting involved rather than simply just posting.

No idea how much people charge, I suppose it depends on business type and budget. I suppose you could spend an hour a day managing their Twitter account and work out a sensible hourly rate that would be suitable for you.

It entirely depends on the level of activity they want. If it's just sharing content etc, then that's one thing, but it also strays into business development if they want you to target interaction with certain key people.

Also do they want you to research/create content or will they provide it.

Rates vary massively depending on how much time they want to invest. I would charge them your normal hourly rate and see what they say.

Hello

As mentioned above it depends on the sort of company they are. Do you mean media outlets who you write for as a journo or other companies? Media outlets is a whole other game...if you mean other companies:

If they are very newsworthy and you might need to jump on there at a moment's notice then that is different to running an account for a local hairdressers etc. However, I guess newsworthy/sensitive orgs would be more likely to 'man' their own accounts...

So assuming the company is selling a not completely newsworthy product or service I'd suggest:

• Allow 1 - 2 hours a week to find stories to share (this assumes your client doesn't have a big supply of their own stories) and schedule the tweets (Hootsuite & Buffer are great) and keep a bit of an eye on any replies/mentions. I'd try to go for 5 - 6 Tweets a day across the day, weekdays if that is when your audience are likely to be on Twitter.

Then I'd allow another 1 - 2 hours a month to follow more people, and try to drive up engagement and produce a short report monitoring your activity.

I'd try to get them to pay you by the hour though, so if it goes mad (you are able to jump on a hashtag or attention comes to the company for whatever reason) you are then paid for it.

Not sure if that helps? I would expect to charge anything from £20 - £50 per hour depending on the client's size etc.

That help?

I am a copywriter and write facebook posts for a client. I write 20 per month and it takes me about 3-4 hours to write all of them including links. However they do all of the uploading and sourcing of photos.

I charge £150 for these 20 posts. pretty much a bargain - but the work is relatively easy.

The research is the hardest bit - but writing the posts is very simple. Obviously Tweets would be even easier. just be sure you understand the importance of hashtags and so on.

people tend to have high expectations of twitter and facebook and think everything will go viral. It won't. if yo9u are building up a twitter account from scratch, it takes lots of hard work int he marketing department. Do they expect you to do that?

Thanks, all, for your insights, really useful. Sorry I've taken so long to touch base. The hardest thing will be getting started and building up those to follow..... other work has taken precedent but i do need to start thinking about this again before client nags me!

I'm reviving this thread because I'm about to start a business in Social Media. Wondered if the OP could update? Interested to know usual rates for this kind of work?

Hi cream, my client who was considering it decided not to in the end so it became (perhaps temporarily) a non issue for me. I'm hugely busy with other freelancing but i expect i'll be asked again sooner rather than later! I'll keep watching this thread....

Ta for update!