Social Marketing on the Cheap!
January 7th, 2010by Robert Middlestetter
Today I read a well-written paper entitled “Community Building: Social Marketing on the Cheap for B-to-B.” While the paper was sufficiently grounded in social media best practices, I found myself in serious disagreement with the precept that you can build a successful social media program “on the cheap.” The author went on to suggest that social media could be done for low or no costs!
This concept obviously comes from an obscure cost accounting principle that suggests if you’re paying a person a salary and you ask them to perform a task, you’re actually getting that task done for free because you’re already paying their salary. Don’t drink the Kool-Aid people, it doesn’t work that way.
Effective and insightful content is not cheap. In fact, it requires your best thinking combined with carefully planned consistency and above average writing skills. The only thing “cheap” in social media is the actual delivery system. Social media is an important emerging communications tool that should be funded in direct relationship to its potential contribution to sales and revenue growth. Establishing the value of that contribution requires careful research, planning, and integration—none of theses disciplines are cheap. “Community Building: Social Marketing on the Cheap” is more of a con than a concept.
Tags: Marketing Strategy, social media, social media for b2b marketing, strategic marketing