Is Social Media Free?

With the slow economy, we're getting more and more calls about how to effectively use social media which is great, we love new people and it's exiting to watch a company make it's first podcast or RSS. However, we're also hearing a lot of "we cut our marketing budget so we're using social media" which is not quite as good. There are a lot of companies hoping that social media is not only free but can catapult your brand to infamy and riches in a week and that's a pretty scary expectation. So how much social media is free and what do you have to pay for?

1) If you don't put your content somewhere, it won't be seen. There are both free and paid ways to do this and we at Sway think it makes sense to do a little of both. If you only put your video on free video sharing sites you might get some views but placing it on social communities where your audience is spending time makes sense too and this is generally paid for. The trick is to avoid the massive sites with high CPM's and a broad user base. Those aren't targeted and thus they act much like traditional media buys.
2) Do you value your time? Social media can be time consuming. You could look at it like shopping and know that you can go to Saks Fifth Avenue and get a Chanel dress. You could also find a Chanel dress for $5 at a thrift store but you're going to spend a long time finding it. Updating free tools like Facebook, LinkedIn groups, blogs, monitoring forums and video view numbers takes time and could arguably be an employee's entire job. If that employee isn't very familiar with social media it could take even longer.
3) What are you paying for? Paying a company or freelancer to handle your social media gets sticky when the deliverable is engagement. What is an engagement worth? The answer is you're paying for a combination of things. Sites that your hired hand knows about that you don't, contacts they have developed, ideas and strategy, cumulative market knowledge, the experience to determine if success is being acheived or not.

So while it's correct to say that social media is free it's also true that nothing really great is ever free. The balance of free and paid is ultimately up to you.

~Caitlin