You Didn’t Think Social Media Was Actually Free Did You?
The Complaint
In her article 4 Facebook Marketing Myths And How To Overcome Them author Chrisine Gallagher writes a really good article on four of the more well known Facebook marketing myths that have been floating around and then effectively debunks those myths while offering solutions to overcome your Facebook marketing obstacles.
While the article itself is of the highest of quality (as one would expect coming from a Social Media Examiner post), one particular paragraph in Christine’s article slightly bothered me. In myth number 1 she states:
Plus, compare the low to no cost of using Facebook—essentially just your Internet connection—to other marketing and advertising methods such as the Yellow Pages, the newspaper, TV and radio, and you’ve got a pretty convincing case for why you should be building a presence on Facebook.
A Quick Analogy
Most people would agree that going out to a nice restaurant for a meal is not free and you’ll find yourself paying the bill at the end. There are fixed costs for the restaurant including purchasing the ingredients, paying the chef to prepare the meal, paying the staff to bring your meal to you and upon leaving the restaurant you would leave the customary tip.
Now contrast this with dining in at home would you claim that cooking your own meal at home is free? I would contend that although you are preparing your meal at home; the meal is far from free and at minimum, someone had to go to the grocery store to purchase the food that will be prepared.
There are countless other analogies and comparisons I could have chosen to make but I believe they would all come to the same conclusion, doing something yourself doesn’t necessarily make it free.
Why Social Media Marketing Isn’t Free
What is it about social media marketing that gives it the no cost stigma? Is it because there is no exchange of money between individuals when you yourself are the one doing the marketing work? Has a false impression been created simply because social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn are free to use? Is it because many of the tools we use on a daily basis are also free to use?
I don’t know the answer as to why many feel that social media is free but what many individuals fail to take into account is that there are real-world costs associated with social media marketing, costs such as:
- Time – As most of us have heard repeatedly throughout life time is money and in order for your brand to be successful in social media you are going to have to spend the hours cultivating the relationships necessary and engaging with fans and creating content. If you only spend one hour per day dedicated towards your social media marketing efforts by the end of the month you would have spent around 30 hours. Almost an entire work week spent just on your marketing efforts. That’s not taking into account the hours spent on content creation. When you add up the hours spent crafting blog posts, shooting video and sending out tweets the simple act of creating new content will add an additional untold amount of hours to your efforts.
If you are self managing your social media efforts is your time worth something or because money doesn’t exchange hands you think of this as volunteer work? What if you were to pay an employee to manage your social media efforts? Would you still think the cost involved was zero? - Outsourcing – If you are a busy entrepreneur (and give me the name of one who isn’t) you probably have very few hours in your day set aside purely for marketing purposes or maybe you have the time but want a custom Facebook landing tab but just don’t possess the necessary skills to create one or maybe you just don’t feel like learning social media marketing but want your business involved.
Whatever the case may be if you want to be involved in social media but don’t’ want to do it yourself you’re going to have to resort either paying an employee to do this for you or hiring an agency to manage your social networking efforts for you. - Analytics And Monitoring – Nobody is able to get one past the goalie with every shot and that is the main reason why you should be monitoring and tracking your social media efforts at even the most basic of levels. There are many free and very goodsocial media monitoring and brand analysis tools available (Klout, Social Mention and Facebook Insights just to name a few) for use but once again you will have to put the hours in to analyzing the data to see what is working, what isn’t working and where you could improve your efforts. If you wanted to go even further into monitoring and analysis you may have to turn to a paid solution such as Radian6 or ScoutLabs.
Ask Them As I’m Sure They’ll Agree
For those companies with small marketing budgets social media marketing looks like the proverbial white knight as the armor glistens with claims of free but in reality social media is nothing but a lower cost alternative to traditional forms of advertising such as television, print and radio.
I for one am willing to bet that if you talked to companies such as Dell and the NHL who have successfully deployed social media marketing they would agree with me that there was a cost associated with their social marketing campaigns and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn if those costs were actually quite high; just not as high as the more traditional forms of advertising and marketing.
