As a social media manager I can tell you that most of us have to fight hard for our budget. Sometimes that’s because there isn’t budget to be had but often it’s because social media is not deemed to be as worthy as CPC or media buying in the eyes of the big bosses.
I’ve worked for huge brands that “don’t believe” in social media marketing and consequentially my budget was minuscule.
So let’s assume you don’t have a budget at all… oh the horror! Here’s 3 ways to ace social media management with zero budget.
Maximise Your Visuals
Visuals are essential for good social media marketing and the figures back it up.
Researchers found that colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80% and visual content is more than 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.
Use free programs such as Canva to create beautiful covers and visual graphics without needing to outsource your designs or learn photoshop! Remember to add branding, hashtags and a shortened link to accompany each image so you really benefit from your work! If you need additional images why not check out my top 7 free stock photo sites right here. You know it’s not cool to “borrow” from Google don’t you!
Research
If you’re not properly targeting then you are not being cost effective because you are effectively wasting money on people who are not interested. When every penny counts, you need to be shrewd with your advertising spend and of course your time.
Use free tools such as Followerwonk for Twitter to dig into your audience or use CrowdFire to discover the people who are actually interested in your marketing efforts and ditch the ones who are not. Never buy fake followers on Facebook as you will be boosting posts to people who don’t care or perhaps don’t exist. Properly utilize every targeting element on Facebook to ensure that every paid boost… even if it’s just $5 is worthwhile. Create audiences based around your target location, gender, age and language to make sure every cent is well spent.
Get More Content Shares
I get it, you’re all alone and possibly writing your own content too so getting shared on numerous networks can be tough. However, great content goes hand in hand with social media so you need to find cost effective ways to maximize the impact of what you have.
Use free tools like Buffer to schedule social sharing for your blog posts, this means that you can repeat the same piece of content on different days and different time zones. Repurpose evergreen content into infographics using Canva or extract sentences/statistics and tweet them. Posting to sites like Reddit encourages social virality and means that each piece you produce is amplified.
Remember to ensure that the social share buttons on your blog are working and be sure to reciprocate any positive social responses that your content generates. Remember, having a budget, however huge is no substitute for excellent content.
Remember, great social media management comes from talent and a flair for marketing and that’s something money can’t buy!
By Charli Day, Freelance Blogger
