One of the biggest untruths in social media, and attempting to use social media for marketing, is that it’s entirely free. Of course, this comes from the “free” price that goes along with signing up for accounts on sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. It doesn’t cost you one cent from your bank account to open a basic account on these sites, but there are costs involved when you are considering entering into the social media space – since these costs are not immediate, the illusion that marketing efforts in social media cost less becomes even greater for companies looking for cheaper solutions to reaching their audiences.
Your Employees’ Time is Money. Many companies seem to forget to figure into the larger picture is how much it costs them in time and resources of employees, tools and equipment. While it may be free to sign up for the account, the real cost comes with your employees maintaining those accounts and keeping them active in the social communities. Just creating the profiles and leaving them there doesn’t mean you are automatically going to gain a foothold in a social media community.
The tools are free, but they could end up costing you in the end. As every marketer knows, you still have to measure efficacy. While tools such as Google Analytics and Google Alerts, there still is a cost of your employees’ time. Also, the free tools do have a limit of scope, and you may have to upgrade to more expensive tools.
When you hear all the hype about Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and how these wonderful “free” tools are helping companies reach new people every day, step back away from the hype and ask yourself how many man hours it took for that team to attain that success with the social media site. How much time really went into research and planning? How are they measuring success?
Tags: ROI