Scottish Government spend on social media graphics: FOI release

Information requested

The total amount that the Scottish Government has spent on graphics for social media posts (for posting on sites such as Twitter/X, Bluesky, Facebook, and LinkedIn) broken down into a table to reflect every financial year from 2021-22 to date.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have all of the information you have requested. The reasons why we don't have the information are explained below.

The majority of the Scottish Government’s social media management and organic content creation is developed by internal teams across the Communications Division, supported by external agencies where required. We do not track the time spent by staff on creating graphics as there is no business need to record that data. We are able to provide annual costs which cover the licenses for software and applications used to create social media assets as below. Please note, these may be used for a variety of social media outputs, not just graphics.

2021-2022	Parent Club - £540
2022-2023	Overarching Scottish Government Social Content - £3,558.23 Parent Club - £540
2023-2024	Overarching Scottish Government Social Content - £13,573.08 Parent Club - £540 Brand Scotland - £217
2024-2025	Overarching Scottish Government Social Content - £12,955.99 Parent Club - £540 Brand Scotland - £250

Where social media graphics are not created by internal teams, they may be created by external agencies which fall under various lots within the Marketing Services Framework. 

Scottish Government marketing and advertising spend is published each year and can be found at https://www.gov.scot/collections/marketing-spend/  including a breakdown by media type. In the majority of cases it has not been possible to break down agency costs specifically for social media content creation as this is generally contained within an overall estimate covering account management, creative development and production costs for all campaign elements across all channels. However, we have been able to identify the following costs specifically relating to creation of social media content as below. Please note, these costs include video production fees and usage costs which are not possible to break out.

2021-22	-
2022-23	Net Zero - £13,875
2023-24	Net Zero - £18,816.28
2024-25	-

About FOI

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