What’s the ROI of Social Media?

Marketing has always been big business. Examples of this abound — from ancient Roman sculptors stamping product names on their products to billionaire marketing gurus of the nineteen hundreds like Dean White. But both billboards and sculpture ads have become low-tech and inefficient compared to the wealth of organic marketing opportunities that now abound in the online world.

TV commercials, magazine ads, radio pitches, and other traditional means of advertising all fall short of the personalized power of social media. However, many business owners have neglected to take their social media marketing campaigns as seriously as they should be, which causes them to miss out on incredible opportunities. Let’s take a quick look at a few of the reasons why social media offers such potential for high ROI.

Low Overhead Makes Social Media Marketing Agile

Agile businesses love social media marketing because it can be as high or as low as they’d like. Marketing on social media platforms is also a much more adaptable method of gaining publicity rather than paying to go on TV or be featured on a billboard. This is because iterating on a social media message is quick and relatively painless — whereas the cost of producing and purchasing a television ad is quite a commitment.

A prime time ad during the height of The Walking Dead, for example, would have set your company back $400,000 dollars — and even ads on local stations will cost thousands. A/B testing, rapid adaptation, and other strategies that help make social media marketing highly responsive are also next to impossible with television, billboards, and most other traditional forms of advertising.

How Social Media Marketing Has Worked for Us

By dedicating scarcely more than an hour a day to our organic LinkedIn efforts for Scotch and Ramen, we have managed to double our audience size on a weekly basis. The strategy? Spend fifteen to thirty minutes developing content for a post, and then spend an hour engaging with the comments around that post. If you are interested in learning more about how we use organic content and audience engagement to grow our social media audiences cost-free, then this recent article on our favorite Instagram growth strategy is a good place to start.

What About Advertising?

Social media advertising can be highly effective as well — selling ad space is clearly a large part of the financial strategy of giants such as Facebook, and this is effective for a reason. Social media ads can be a great supplement to an organic strategy, but building with organic first is usually most effective, as it is crucial for demonstrating authority.

Looking for help building your social media content in a cohesive and strategic fashion? Scotch and Ramen can help in a variety of ways. Let’s start off by having a quick chat about your organization. Feel free to schedule a call with us at your convenience!

Originally published at www.scotchandramen.com.