I like to think I can see things from the perspective of a service provider–a company that provides similar services to those provided by Saxum–and also from the viewpoint of the customer. I am also a consumer; I don’t like being cheated or charged more than a service or product is worth.

Setting up a Twitter account is free. Yes, it’s free and it takes 5 minutes to do. It’s also really simple…it consists of entering your email address and choosing a user name, basically.

But Saxum did more for ODOT than just set up the account. They apparently provided 10 days worth of consulting and training to the staff at ODOT. Okay, so that works out to $750  per day, if they charged them nothing to set up the account. Figure they sent out one or two staff people to the ODOT offices to do this, that works out to $375 per person per day, or about $9 an hour…and I KNOW those Saxum folks make more than that.

They also created a custom Twitter “look” for the ODOT page. So throw in a few hours of time from a graphic artist, who also makes considerably more than $9 an hour.

So say $250 to set up the Twitter account, $300 for the graphic artist, that leaves you about $700 a day for training. $700 a day for training for a group of employees is incredibly reasonable.

The ODOT staff are presumably tweeting now, thanks to their training. But they had to get some followers. To get 500 Twitter followers within a couple of days of launching your account is pretty darn good (think Ellen Degeneres and Oprah Winfrey). Saxum undoubtedly did some footwork to gather followers quickly for ODOT.

So to say that ODOT was charged $7500 for a “free service” is really not accurate. Yes, a Twitter account is free…but they got a lot more than a Twitter account.

Saxum is doing all of us in this industry a favor. They have set a price tag for service and expertise that is consistently undermined and undervalued.

“Anyone can make a web site!” “Anyone can write a press release!” “My nephew can shoot that video, he has a Mac!” How many times have we heard this!?

Yes, anyone with a camera can shoot a video. Yes, you can get “web site tonight” for $10 on Godaddy and probably get a web page set up. Will it be effective? Will it do the job you want it to do for your business? Will it convert customers? Will you be able to get any information from it on how it’s performing? The answer is unequivocally NO.

It’s almost always true that “you get what you pay for.” ODOT needed a turnkey solution rolled out in a very short time frame. Saxum delivered.

By the way, Oklahoma Media Group provides these services too…but we don’t have the overhead Saxum does. We can help your business engage consumers and gain new customers. Let’s talk about how Twitter (and Facebook, and other social media, and an effective web presence) can help your business.