Because the medium for delivering messages on social media networks is free (twitter, facebook, youtube, etc), there is a perception that marketing using social media is free – it’s not!
Social media marketing requires a good strategy, experienced management, and continuous monitoring. This translates into the need for costly resources in the form of time and resources: yes, sometimes even cash!
For example, it might be free to post a funny video on youtube in attempt to get viral distribution. But if done right, it takes time and money to conceive and produce the video (even if you use a flip video), and results need to be monitored in order to learn its effectiveness.
It takes time to create effective tweets, build fans, and write articles. So much time, that your social media marketing efforts can consume the day of one, or many, people – including you!
So, is social media marketing free? “There is no free lunch.” I remember my economics instructor drilled this saying into our head so much, and it seems, with social media marketing (SMM), that it is so true. Anyone who has tried to manage a SMM campaign knows that it can easily consume your day, so at a minimum, the cost of a SMM campaign is measured by opportunity cost.
In this case, opportunity cost is measured by the value of your time—what else could you have been doing all day long? If you could hold down a job for $45,000 on a W-2, yet you are self-employed, the opportunity cost is about $60,000 because you are picking up the tab for self employment.
Where does that take me? When talking to clients, who hear “social media is free”, they wonder why we charge for consulting, training and support. If you ask my landlord, he will say finding paid employment, whether a w-2 or self-employed position, is best for my future success.
My friend, Dean Holmes and I were recently talking about social media strategies and how to find and show the ROI of social media for our clients. He showed me Unilyzer.com, an analytic tool that uses Google analytics and your social network logins to measure traffic from social sites, stickiness on site, page views, and all the other great things you look for from Google with a bit more kick, all delivered via the web on a colorful and easy to manage dashboard.
So I checked it out and called for more information about how I could use Unilyzer.com to help my clients find the value that I am bringing them, the ROI. It matters to me—and others who are my peers—whether our clients understand the value that we bring them. Emilio called me back.
Emilio is the president of Unilyzer.com, and he patiently played phone tag and then did a private webinar to show me how to use the site and how to maximize the dashboard for my clients. I have since told several people about it and have shared it with clients, all of whom see the value in measuring the effectiveness of your efforts.
And guess what. Unilyzer.com isn’t free. But it’s not expensive either, and the ROI is knowledge, trends, benchmarking, etc. The bottom line is this. Social media is not free, but it’s a heck of a deal when compared with the alternative. Learn all you can, read, attend webinars, talk to friends. It’s not that you have to listen to all the advice, but the more you know, the more you can figure out how to make this work for you.
As a consultant with a deep, diverse background in this field, I can certainly give you advice. So can others. In the end though, you have to decide what’s right for you, what brings you the return you are looking for, and what tools you want to use to determine if things are truly working like you thought they would.
Social media is not free, but it is affordable and does level the playing field for people who step up, grab the bulls by the horns, and jump in to participate.
Need to figure out if you’re getting any ROI? Check out Unilyzer.com and then give me a call. I’d love to talk to you about what’s working and what’s not. And look for our next book Rock the World with Social Media, I think you’ll be pleased with the advice.
(Special thanks to Emilio Basaldua of Unilyzer.com for his help in showing my clients real ROI.)
