Is Social Media Marketing FREE!?

By: Malik Shishtawi / Digital Marketing & Social Media Consultant.

“Why do we need that budget, we always hear that social media is FREE!!?”

This is a question that I hear every time we used to provide a proposal for Social Media Management services, & I want to explain here the difference between Social Media Services by professionals & Social Media Platforms..

YES its free when we talk about platforms so we you need to create a page on facebook, or a channel on youtube or an account on twitter you don’t need to pay them money for that, & that’s what they mean when they say free! you don’t need to pay thousands of dollars to book that location on that platform, while if you book a location in an exhibition or a mall you will pay even more! (and you will not get that same traffic )..

Anyway, so we understand now that platforms are FREE but what about the services!!? sure not & here is why:

1- When you deal with service provider, you will use their consultants to set your social media strategy which costs consulting man hour!

2- When you deal with service provider, you will get an account manager who is responsible for meetings & aligning with you to keep you up to date & a dedicated one will cost salary!

3- When you deal with a service provider, you will get a social media officer who is in charge to post the content, interact with people to engage them & respond to their comments, that one also is salary based!

4- When you deal with a service provider, you will need someone to design & develop your pages & activities, which means a designer & a developer which again will cost

in addition to the cost of advertising your activities through some social banner, so whats the idea of having a great contest on facebook that is very attractive & with great prize without promoting that contest through social banners which is paid again!

And all of the above explains why it is not worth it to hire someone in-house to do it, because you will be paying salaries that is much more than your monthly fees with an SM agency, in addition to the time you’ll be needing to teach them!

But again, whatever you’re paying for the agency as a monthly fees to adapt & manage your social media strategy & presence, it is much less than the cost of  traditional marketing channels, so if you compare it together, Social media will be almost 10% of the other traditional media budget, which is ALMOST FREE