Best Ways to do Social Media Marketing on a Budget

Are you spending on Social Media Marketing wisely?

You don't need to invest millions to attract an audience and build a community on social media. With the right tools, you can get a lot of exposure with little money (or even no money at all!).

Creating a budget is not the most exciting thing to do, but it is necessary in order to distribute your expenses correctly. Every relevant company is already investing in social media marketing because it has enormous benefits for their products or services. So when creating your budget it is recommended to check how much money your competition is spending, to have an idea where you’ll fit in the market.

With this in mind, I have formulated two budgets, one that has no cost at all and the other one that goes up to $100 a month. This will allow you to compare and decide which one is more fitting for your company.

Related read: Content marketing for startups? Here's how we doubled our blog traffic

1. Visual Design

Visual design is the way to go if you want your company to stand out on Social Media. Through graphic design and great photography you can create a strong connection with your audience and consequently, transmit your brand’s identity. The human brain process images faster than text, so we will naturally tend to be more attracted to visuals; that’s why images create more engagement in social media than just publishing plain text content.

Budget: $0

SQUARESPACE LOGO

Squarespace is a great website builder, with support for pages ranging from blogs to eCommerce. Among the tools they offer Squarespace Logo is a big time and money saver, since it lets you create a logo in minutes, with pretty impressive results.

With a low-resolution, watermarked logos are free, and with just $10 you can have a finished high-res logo.

UNSPLASH

If you’re on the need for high-resolution photos but you don't really want to spend on it, Unsplash is the page that you are looking for. All the photos available on Unsplash can be copied, modified, distributed and used at no cost, including for commercial purposes. They post 10 new photos every 10 days, so be sure to check it regularly. You might also want to read about alternatives to stock photos.

SLIDEBEAN

Yeah, of course we’re suggesting Slidebean. While our platform is focused on making presentations, you can hack it to design nice social media content without hiring a graphic designer. But, what do we mean by “hacking” it? Well, you can create any idea that you want in the slides, and by just taking a screenshot of it you will have an image that you can use as visual design in your social networks.

CREATE YOUR PRESENTATION

Free Logo Maker by Adobe

Logos are an integral part of any business and the Adobe Express free logo maker can help you create your perfect design in no time. Pick from a wide variety, including AI-generated quality logos that will be ready for printing or digital use across all platforms!

Budget: $0- $100

NOUN PROJECT ( $9.99/ MONTH )

With over 100,000 icons, Noun Project is a website that aggregates and catalogs symbols that are created and uploaded by graphic designers worldwide. If you want to try it as a free member it is a requirement to give credit to the creator. Also, with $1.99 you can purchase royalty free icons. On the other hand, as a NounPro member you have unlimited royalty free icons and there’s no need to credit the creator!

The good thing about fonts is that you can choose between PNG & SVG file types, which lets you scale them infinitely and re-color them as you see fit. They also have an awesome Mac App, in case you’re an Apple user.

FIVERR ( SERVICES FROM $5 )

This site is a global online marketplace that offers tasks and services starting at just $5.

Here are a few tips that will help you when buying in Fiverr:

• Develop relationships with the people you work with, eventually you can hire them for bigger gigs outside of Fiverr.
• Be as specific as possible with the details of the gig.
• Plan ahead. Rush gigs are more expensive. No need to pay extra if you don't have to.
• If you want to have different of options for a specific task, hire at least 3 freelancers. That way you’ll have the chance to pick from the final results, the design that will best suit your company.

2. Advertising

Budget: $0

Well, there’s no such thing as a free meal, and the same goes for ads. If you want something good, you need to invest some money to get it!

Budget: $0- $100

FACEBOOK ADS ($40/ MONTH )

Useful tips:

• Don't buy likes Although you can create the illusion that your page’s company is well known since it has tons of likes, you’re actually not attracting real customers with this approach. Using and organic strategy can get you authentic traffic in your page and ultimately, growth in your business.
• Boost to your followers Social Media Marketing only works when you actually have followers or fans. You must be consistent with your strategies, content should be original and relevant. Be responsive to questions, comment or complaints.
• Upload your mailing list to Facebook In the Audiences section on Facebook Ads, by just clicking “Create New Audience” you can upload a mailing list or import directly from MailChimp. This tip can help you target users that you have an existing relationship with.  
• Keep an eye on your potential audience meter Facebook generates an approximate number of people you’ll reach when you add targeting options and narrow your audience in the audience meter. (this is only an estimate)
• Keep text under 20% when you post image ads As a Facebook advertising rule, the image-based ads that appear in users’ news feeds won’t be approved if the text takes more that 20% of the image space.

If you're ready for real pro tips on Facebook ads, you might want to check out this article: Pro Facebook ads tips you haven’t heard about

TWITTER ADS

The main difference that Twitter Ads has from the others is that you can target people by the tweets or hashtags that they have published, or by the people they are following.

TWITTERFAV.COM ($4.99/MONTH)

This advanced twitter companion tool is a site that tracks what you, your friends, and everyone else is favoriting and retweeting on Twitter.

Useful tips:

• Setup pulling of tweets for favoriting
• Select keywords and let the automation pull possible tweets
• You can identify status of the favorite list from the dashboard
• Setup favorite rules in order to pull tweets by specific keyword and owner

To Slidebean, this tool has been very helpful since it has helped us gain twitter followers with engagement and conversion. Also, we dedicate less time managing social accounts and we get more ROI in the process!

3. Dashboards

Budget: $0

BUFFER

You can schedule (in an optimized way) posts to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with this this awesome application. Buffer makes it super easy to share any page that you’re reading.

Useful tips:

• With the different account options you can post to multiple networks at once
• You can post images and quotes to give your followers more variety

FB INSIGHTS

Although this is something you probably already know, Facebook Insights is a source of data that allows you to easily track the performance of your Facebook page. It also helps you drive strategic marketing decisions. What you learn with these insights can guide you to adjust the content on your Facebook posts, so when you publish it you can reach your target audience more effectively.

Budget: $0- $100

BUFFER PRO ($10/ MONTH)

By upgrading to Buffer Pro you unlock these features:

• Connect RSS feeds to your Buffer

• Add up to 100 post and tweets
• Manage 10 social profiles

4. Alternative Social Networks

Budget: $0

REDDIT

This really cool social network works as a news website where users can post content of any kind, such as text or direct links. Content is upvoted/downvoted and ranked according to its relevance, which means that the front page of Reddit will give you only content that the community is really excited about.

Reddit is divided in subreddits that range from broad subjects like Entrepreneurship, to any niche audience you can think off. Believe me, if it exists, it’s on Reddit.  

Here are some tips when using Reddit..

• Open an account beforehand This way you’ll get to know how the place works before publishing something.
• Study the format It’s essential to learn how to compose in Reddit so your publications fit with the format that is used in the site
• Get karma by posting relevant content Good karma helps your account grow! you can get it by posting content that is relevant and interesting, not necessarily related to what you do.
• Participate and discuss  Join the conversation, it’s the best way to get people to know you!

INSTAGRAM

This social network is by far one of the most growing communities ever and has one of the world’s largest ads platforms.

With Instagram ads, you can drive awareness, increase customers and share your story with a highly engaged audience!

The process of setting up, running and tracking campaigns is similar to what you do with Facebook ads! Nonetheless, if you're new to advertising on Instagram or even Facebook, here's an overview of how to get started:

1. Create a Business Page & Profile

2. Set Up Ad

3. Determine Budget

4. Publish

You can also promote your company organically on Instagram with these tips that I’ve gathered for you:

1. Start with clear goals You need to contemplate how Instagram fits into your brand marketing strategy. What is your objective? Do you want to increase awareness or reach a new audience?
2. Choose themes to tell a cohesive story Choose story lines that transmit your brand’s identity. Then, create posts that follow these story lines for a diversity of content in your company’s account.
3. Take time to create high-quality content Work with your team in order to produce exceptional images and videos that go along with your brand
4. Market your brand using trends You need to be always up-to-date with all the trending topics of the moment so you can take advantage of the current situation so you can involve your company
5. Reward/Interact with followers It’s always good to create connections with the customers. That way the feel like they matter to your company. You can reward them by organizing “contests” or “giveaways” related to your products or services.
6. Feature Photos of Employees By posting photos of your employees, your followers can feel a deeper connection with the company, since they can actually “see” who are the ones that work behind your brand.

Budget: $0- $100

REDDIT ADS

The self-serve ads on Reddit are sold on a CPM basis. In other words, you are charged a certain amount  per every 1,000 impressions.

• The minimum that you are allowed to spend per target is $5, which really lets you run cheap experiments to find out if your content is relevant. Reddit is still an unexplored and possibly unpopular ads platform, which could get you higher exposure if you learn to leverage it correctly.

Now that you have a broader perspective, it's your time to sit and think where should you be spending some money on and where you shouldn't. Let us know in the comments if any of these tactics worked for you.

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