Can You Really Use Social Media To Do “Free” Marketing On The Internet?

The Concept Of “Free Marketing On Social Media”

Many people get excited about the idea of “free marketing” on social media sites.

Yes, looking at it from a monetary point of view, it is possible to do marketing and communicating with people without spending money. Taking Facebook as an example, you can communicate and post without spending money, but there are also options for paid advertising available.

Free marketing is a relative concept though. Perhaps you don’t have to spend money, but surely you will have to spend time. An important fact to consider in this scenario, is "time is money". This means you will have to invest time in order to build relationships and get the desired results.

Whether you invest time or money is your choice. The good news is that if money is a problem, but you have some time available, you can go ahead and build your business.  

Social Media Won’t Make You A Millionaire Overnight.

There is a lot of hype out there that leave many people with the impression that they are going to make a couple of posts on some social media sites, and the millions are going to come rolling in.

Unfortunately, in reality it doesn’t work that way. The truth is that you have to build relationships with people, and that takes time. Even though you do not have to speak to people face to face, you communicate via the internet. You are still communicating with real people.

What Social Media Can And Can’t Do For You

Social media cannot make up or cover up for a bad product or service. Using Social Media can have a viral effect. But this can go in both positive and negative directions.  If you use social media wisely, you can use this to your benefit to test and find out what people are saying about you and your product or service. Once you know what the response is like, you can determine your future strategy. If on the other hand you just dive in and start selling, it might actually backfire on you. That same viral effect you so desired can now end up hurting you more than doing you any good.

With the right approach, you can first build relationships and trust. Then you start testing your product or service. If done wisely and correctly, it now can go viral in the right way.

Posting On Social Media Sites

Do not try to sell something in every post you make. People will see you as someone who just wants to sell something. If that is your ultimate aim, I wouldn’t recommend social media marketing. Then rather go for the paid advertising route, which is commercial from the word go, and everybody knows what to expect.

The term “social media” explains exactly what it is all about. Socialize and build relationships. Make posts with quality content. It might be motivational, or contain some valuable information. I believe a good ratio for a business post with a link can be about 1 in every 10 posts. Use this as a guide only. As long as you feel comfortable with your posting and you get positive responses, you should be fine.

It is so much more rewarding to make some real friends in the process, instead of making money only.

Investing Your Time In A Productive Way

If you have to spend all your time posting and interacting with people, you might ask where you will find the time to actually work.

This is the beauty of technology. There are various tools available that you can use to schedule your posts. By doing this, you can automate the posting process for some time in advance. This will free you to be able to carry on with the work that needs to be done. You can plan your day to the extent where you can decide how much time to spend on Twitter or Facebook and interact with your followers and friends. It can be 10 minutes; it can be 30 minutes per day. The choice is yours.

One such tool is BUFFER. It is a free tool that you can use to schedule your posts. It has an analytic feature also to analyze your results, showing how many views you receive, how many clicks, re-tweets etc.  This is all very important information for you to base you marketing actions on.

Social media is a great marketing tool and it can be fun, but you will need to make some kind of an investment. Whether it is time or money, but when used correctly, it will be worth your while.