Low-Cost Social Media Marketing Ideas for Your Small Business

There was a time when you had to spend hundreds of dollars every month on ads to drive traffic. Social media now empowers you to promote your business to a global audience at a much lower cost, and in a more natural way. Discover some of the most affordable social media marketing ideas for small businesses.

Create Informative or Instructional Slideshows

Slideshows are easier to make than videos, and cheaper — in fact, they’re free. Use SlideShare to turn your market data and research into information-packed slides that your audience will enjoy and want to share.

Recycle Old Content

You probably have a blog already — why not compile your best posts into a mini e-book that you offer to all the people who like your Facebook page? You can also transform old content by changing its format. For example, a How to blog post can become a YouTube video tutorial, while a case study can become an eye-catching infographic. Spread these through your social channels.

Organize Social Media Contests

Facebook image contests and Twitter questions and answers contests are easy to host and, so long as they offer worthwhile prizes, can boost traffic to both your social profile and your website. To increase participation, offer a prize to everyone who joins in, even if it’s a mere 2% discount code or a free mini e-book.

Add a sense of urgency to the contest by hosting it for a limited period only. Announce it in advance, to build expectation.

Host Educational Events on Social Media

For a small business, hosting social media contests all the time may not be feasible. Instead, you can alternate contests with events. With a bit of creativity, you can turn your knowledge and expertise into classes and other educational events. Your aim should be to attract as many participants.

It really doesn’t matter what you sell. If you sell flowers, you could create a short course on “How to Buy the Right Flowers.” If you sell tiles, the lesson could be about buying the most eco-friendly or long-lasting tiles.

The event itself can be a live chat session with participation through comments. It could also be a pre-recorded video.

In the end, remember that social media, though free to use, can eat up your time. That’s why you need to develop a social strategy with clear objectives. Otherwise, you may end up spending too much time socializing and not enough time developing your online presence.