KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 30 — Social media consultants have said the Tourism Ministry’s monthly RM30,000 bill to update six Facebook pages is not excessive, as claimed by DAP Youth chief Anthony Loke.

Kal Joffres, director at social media consultancy Tandemic, said RM5,000 per month was “completely average” to maintain and manage content for one page on the popular social network site.

“For more reputable companies it’s RM10,000 to RM12,000 ... for freelancers it could be RM2,000 to RM3,000,” he told The Malaysian Insider.

A digital brand consultant who declined to be named also said the going rate would be around RM5,000 per month, but stressed that the fee would depend on how much work was actually required.

He said for a Facebook page “seeded” or updated twice a day plus updates on micro-blogging site Twitter, the price would range from RM5,500 to RM8,000 per month depending on the nature of the content.

“If they charge for monitoring to see if anyone is talking bad about them (on social media), that can be quite expensive,” he added.

Digital marketing consultant Loh Chi Ming similarly said RM5,000 was “not unreasonable” and pointed out that the rate would depend on the experience of the person managing the page.

“Estimates are usually done in time-hours so if I were to quote a person in time-hours it would be more compared to a more junior person,” he said.

“I suppose you can tell how fair [the rate] is by seeing how much content comes out on their page.”

A check on the Tourism Ministry’s Cuti-Cuti 1 Malaysia Facebook page showed it had been updated one to three times a day in the past month, with occasional gaps of a few days between updates.

Loke today claimed the ministry paid RM240,000 to maintain six Facebook pages over eight months, a job he said could be done by one person.

“This is a minister-level data entry clerk,” the Rasah MP said after showing Parliament reporters a reply from Deputy Tourism Minister Datuk James Dawos Mamit dated November 23.

According to the reply, RM10,000 had been spent each month to give feedback to questions by fans on campaigns and contests and update the database with information collected from users who logged onto the pages.

RM160,000 had also been spent over eight months to “manage wall posts, develop and monitor official information related to tourism, give feedback to views of fans” and to “monitor negative and irrelevant views”.

Additionally, RM558,432 had been spent on contests for the six promotional campaigns, the reply noted.

Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ng Yen Yen came under fire from both the opposition and her Cabinet colleagues in June when it was first revealed that her ministry spent RM1.8 million on six Facebook campaigns.

Critics attacked her for spending such a purportedly huge sum on Facebook pages which cost nothing to set up.

But Dr Ng pointed out that while the Facebook pages were free, money had to be spent on advertising, promotions, data collection and contests.