Pay Less for Social Media

Some social media sites and services try to nickel and dime you for "extras." Watch out for those unnecessary upgrades, and be frugal about how you handle your social media.

Hootsuite is a free consolidation tool where you can post your announcements for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all in one place. Stick with the free version unless you have multiple people on your marketing team and want to control permissions and passwords. If you only have your spouse, or a trusted other person helping you, then just share your password with him/her for Hootsuite.

Facebook Ad Campaign. I've tried this, myself, while running an ad campaign for a chiropractor. I've found that for this type of campaign, there are pros and cons:
Pros:

1. You can control your budget, and on a daily basis. You can spend $7 or $3 or $300/day.
2. There is allowance to get pretty hyper-local in terms of geographic demographics.
3. You can choose which type of post/ad to create.

Cons:

1. While they claim that you can target demographics, this is an imperfect science (especially for the non-aficionado of marketing and advertising).
2. Go big or go home applies to this, in my opinion. Don't throw spaghetti against the wall when it comes to running ad campaigns online (either Pay Per Click on Google or the Facebook Ad Campagins). If you can't go big, then maybe hire a Facebook guru to run the ad campaigns for you. Of course, this adds to your expense (paying the guru), but will ensure that you are not dabbling and wasting your money.

Meetup.com sponsorhips, perks, and advertising. If you go to Meetup.com and are not an active participant (you should be! It's free and it's fun), then you might be tempted to go through the official Meetup.com business sponsor program and pay for your listings. See link above. Don't.

I recommend that you contact group organizers to present them with your offer. Contact them one at a time, be sincere, and be RELEVANT. This should go without saying, but common sense needs used, here. This will cost you a little more time, but save you a lot more money. The time is worth it, however, as you might begin to build relationships with these groups and evolve into other collaboration and growth opportunities.

UBL.org. While Universal Business Listing (UBL) has multiple packages to choose from for syndicating your business listing online in search directories, just choose the Premium Package. In this case, going for Essential is not enough. If you are going to sign up for UBL, which is mandatory for all brick and mortar businesses, in my opinion, then get the Premium Package or don't do it at all.

Please note: UBL is mandatory, not optional. This is even more important than the yellow pages was in the old days. UBL's listing is the old-fashioned yellow pages on steroids. This is not optional.

This is not a complete list of how to pay less for social media, but should give you an idea of how to get started and what to watch out for when making a budget for your internet marketing activities. For more information or coaching around online marketing for your business (either just brand new and wanting to jump in the game, or an intermediate who wants to "step up" her game), contact Angela Schnaubelt or visit the Coach Angela website.