Social media is undoubtedly a powerful marketing tool. Every day it seems another expert or CMO is shouting from the rooftops about how they were able to cut their marketing spend and achieve better results, all by focusing on social marketing. To small business owners, or marketers who have been charge to cut costs, these testimonials all seem to point to one conclusion: Why spend money on paid marketing (like advertising) when you can get better
results for free? 
But there is a big problem with that conclusion: Social media marketing isn’t free. Yes, in the most technical sense, social media doesn’t cost anything. You don’t need to pay for accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc., and you’re free to place any content that you wish on those accounts without charge. However, as the saying goes, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and businesses that rely on “free” marketing are deluding themselves — and potentially harming their brand.
Why Social Isn’t Free
You might be thinking “But wait . . . I haven’t spent a dime on social media, and it still works. What gives?” While it’s true that you may not have actually invested any actual cash in your social campaigns (a strategy that isn’t always effective), you’ve undoubtedly invested time. After all, social media marketing requires creating and posting content — and that’s not even including the time you spend measuring your results, monitoring your social presence, managing conversations, and researching your competitors, trends, and ideas for additional content.
According to one recent survey, the average small business spends at least six hours per week on social media activities — almost an entire workday. And the amount of time businesses spend is increasing. More than 60 percent of business owners say that they spent more time this year on social marketing than last year. The simple fact that many large corporations are actually hiring social media managers — or entire teams — is proof that social takes time, and in business, time is money.
However, it’s more than just time cost that keeps social marketing from being free. Actually reaching your audience can require an investment as well. While Facebook is still the leader when it comes to social sites, the fact is that the typical post only reaches about 16 percent of that business’s followers (people who “like” or “follow” the business.) Reaching a wider audience means investing in sponsored posts, and the more people you want to reach, the more you need to spend.
And it’s not just advertising or sponsored messages that cost money. Many businesses rely on tools like HootSuite or TweetDeck, which have limited features for free users. To get the most from these tools, a paid subscription is often a must — which increases the costs of your social marketing.
Moving Beyond Free
For businesses that are getting results from “free” social media, all of this begs the question of why they should invest in more tools. After all, if it’s not broken, why fix it, right?
The thing is, it is broken, in the sense that you may not be getting the results that you could be getting with some targeted spending — and you may even be hurting your brand without realizing it. Without putting the resources into targeting your content, audience research, and perhaps most importantly, outreach and customer engagement, you are only scratching the surface of what social media can do for your business.
Once you determine that you need to spend some money, the question then becomes: How do I best leverage my resources? Just as not spending any money can backfire on you, spending too much money in the wrong places can do just as much damage. There are many options, but one of the most obvious places to invest your social media marketing budget is in content.
Content is still king, and most businesses report that they spend the most time on creating content to share via social channels. Therefore, investing in content creation is a smart choice, but you should also consider how to best distribute that content for the most benefit. Paid media, in the form of sponsored posts and placements on native advertising networks, is one of the best ways to reach a wider audience and increase engagement.
Investing in analytical tools can also boost your social media marketing. Robust reporting and analytical tools provide valuable data and insights that allow you to create better social campaigns. Often, the tools the can change the outcome of your campaigns aren’t all that expensive either; most small businesses report spending an average of $26 per month on analytical and publishing tools — a small price to pay for a significant ROI.
So while yes, social media is technically “free,” using it to your greatest advantage is not. It’s time to change your mindset and approach to social, and improve your marketing — and your profits.