Let’s be honest: When it comes to social media, babies and puppies are easy. Strategic positioning and management of a business’s social brand? Not so much. But if you’re going to rely on social media as one of your communications channels, it’s important to understand the costs involved.

Many organizations shy away from paid media either because they are hesitant to spend the money or hesitant to make hard decisions about placements or markets. It’s easy to think social feeds are an effective replacement—they’re at your fingertips, instantaneous, and free.

Except they’re not, really. To get it right on a business level takes a good deal of thought. Which takes time. Which costs money.

Let’s break down how the time might be spent:

1. Strategy.
You have two choices when it comes to filling your social media feed: You can be thoughtful, or you can be reactionary. A thoughtful approach is where you need to be in order to support your business growth and your marketing goals. That means you should clearly articulate the type of content you want to share on each channel. Are you giving advice? Making people laugh? Promoting a sale? Changing cultural perceptions? Do you offer different types of content on different channels? If so, are you clear on that? What’s your tone of voice? What pronouns do you use? What benefit will your audience take away when they interact with your content? What does your photography look like? Do you have a color palette?

It’s so important to have a guiding vision here. That doesn’t mean you can’t be spontaneous. But it does mean you’re ensuring the content you share aligns with your goals and your vision. Bonus: when this is clearly articulated, it’s easier to hand off content generation to a new team member and feel confident the ship is being steered in the right direction.

2. Content generation.
Here are a couple of exercises for you: First, time yourself when you’re crafting a tweet. The whole thing, from saying what you want in 280 characters or less, to finding the right hashtags or handles to ping. Mere seconds? A minute? You didn’t get distracted by a trending hashtag or anything? Good.

Next, let’s just take a moment to guesstimate how long it took to craft this photo.

Maybe it only takes you 1 minute for that pithy tweet and 10 minutes (or 15 or 20) to set up a great shot of your product or your person or your concept. Do that math—how many hours is that per year to achieve the frequency you need? On every channel you manage? And with the appropriate research behind it so you know you’re on point?

3. Scheduling and monitoring content.
Buffer is a godsend. It allows you to manage your channels thoughtfully and with intention. But there is a time cost. And it doesn’t negate the fact that you always should monitor current events and react accordingly. The last thing your organization needs is to post obliviously in the face of a national tragedy.

Monitoring also encompasses tracking engagement and analytics. Understanding the data you get from your social media channels can be a science unto itself. It’s worth the time commitment to deeply understand your data and use it to improve your content and refine your strategy.

4. Managing communities.
The holy grail of social media is a robust following and meaningful engagement. And that means … engaging. Responding to questions, messages, good comments, and bad comments. Reaching out to potential followers and audiences. The true time cost of this aspect can be shocking. The truth is, quality content sparks interactions, and that means increased time commitments. This is not a place to skimp on your time budget.

Hint: your social strategy document should outline how this works, where the lines are, what is kosher, and what is not.

As with most things in life, you get what you give. The more you put in to your social media presence, the more rewarding it will be for your organization. Being honest about the time—and true cost—of getting it right is the first step to being successful.