So you're telling me social media is not free?

There seems to be a misconception with social media being a free advertising or marketing platform because so many people use it on a day to day basis without having to pay a single cent since there are no fees to sign up or continuing to use Facebook, Twitter and the likes. That is true if your intention is purely to socialise with your friends, following your favourite celebs or athletes etc however if you run a company wanting to use social media as a marketing channel, there several other aspects that need to be considered and likely is going to cost you.

Running a marketing campaign is time consuming, and so is running one through social media. Social media needs to be continuously monitored throughout the day so it can pick up on what the positives and negatives potential customers or current customers are saying and respond to the issues as soon as possible before it blows up to another social media mishap.

They need to actively update the content of the social media page or tweets, synchronise what they are promoting with traditional means of advertisement.

BP and Coles became a victims of not monitoring their social media websites and and American Express became a victim not having continuous updated content with the appearance of a hoax Facebook page having more fans because the hoax page has more updated content.

More and more companies are now paying, to advertise in Facebook's advertisement column which may potentially be targeted advertising because of Facebook's database on the users with a whole lot of information (what they like, hobbies, gender, sexual orientation etc).

Sure social media is free to register but there are costs tagging along to maintain the marketing channel.