Social Media - Is it really free?

In today’s world, where nothing comes for free, it’s amazing to find so many social media sites offering their services at no cost. There is no fee for signing up with sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. But is it really true? Is it true that marketing campaigns through social media cost less and that it has come up as the most economical yet efficient platform for reaching out to audiences? Let’s find out the truth behind this happy scene.

It sounds too good to be true... Market your product for free on social media! This is how the larger picture appears but on closer look it becomes quite apparent that there are certain costs involved in using social media space. Social media is far from free. It’s true that signing up for an account with social media sites cost no money but the amount of time employees spend in maintaining those accounts to gain a foothold in a social media community translates into real cost. Organizations usually fail to account for the significant amounts of time that is given for planning and executing a social media program.

If an employee was to maintain a regular blog as part of social media marketing, then just imagine how much will be the cost of that person's time? This is something no organisation accounts for. Although social media-based marketing and product development programs are helpful in providing an insight into customers psyche, but again, the time spent in tracking applicable KPIs (key performance indicators) and interacting with customers’ adds up to the real cost, proving that social media is not free.

Till now, personal and official use of internet was clearly defined. But with social media, this fine line has become vague as it is both used in personal as well as professional capacity. This is because social media revolves around connected people and not any specific location. For all you know, an employee might be chatting to his friend when he is supposed to be interacting with a customer!

It’s all about the man hours that a team spends to attain success with the social media site that make sup the hidden cost associated with social media. One gets to hear about the free tools offered by social media sites that help companies connect to new people but no one actually consider the time that is spent in the whole process.

Social media-based marketing and product development programs also require research and planning. One has to carefully plan and give time to engage and truly interact with a community. This also requires prior research to decide which communities one needs to be active in. All this time spent is actually taken from employees’ time. Again this time is never accounted for!

Most of the tools offered by facebook, twitter and other social media sites are free but there is a hidden cost in terms of your employees’ time. When using any tool, you are required to both monitor and measure it. This means -unaccountable time. So, the underlying truth is that social media does involve cost in terms of the time spent in being active on it.