Social Media

10 Low-cost Social Media Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses

Have you ever thought about building a low-cost social media marketing strategy for your blog or company? Maybe, you’re about to call a digital marketing agency you came across through Facebook.

Wait.

Read this blog post before you send out any email or dial their phone number.

Let me assure you that I’m not against hiring a social media manager or social media agency. What I want is to educate you on low-cost social media marketing tactics that you can manage yourself.

Bloggers and startups juggle various things at the same time such as content, promotion, advertising, monetization, social media, and networking.

Does it seem scary to you? This piece of content can be a lightning rod because I’m going to dig deeper into social media marketing methodologies for small businesses and blogs on a budget.

So, not only will this blog post give you perspective on social media marketing, but you’d also be able to save a lot of dollars by just understanding some social media marketing tactics.

social media marketing tactics

Okay, enough with the explanation. Let’s get right into those strategies:

1. Sponsor Local YouTubers

If you’re thinking, “what does that mean?” then it means you aren’t a YouTube consumer. Well, most of the readers reading this blog post would already know about YouTube. In case, you don’t know much about YouTube: it is a popular video platform on the internet. The term “YouTubers” is used for YouTube creators. A lot of brands sponsor videos on YouTube through Famebit, Grin, and Chamboost platforms. These platforms connect brands with influencers on YouTube and work as a facilitator between both parties.

You don’t necessarily need to join and pay for influencer platforms. Alternatively, you have to have an understanding and awareness of the local YouTubers in your country to reach out to and strike a deal. It may take time to find the right YouTuber to work with, but it’s worth it. You might end up saving a lot of money if you sponsor local YouTubers instead of paying thousands of dollars to Google Ads or Facebook Ads.

2. Collaborate with Instagrammers

Have you seen Instagram posts that have a tiny status underneath the creator’s name saying “paid sponsorship with XYZ brand”? Well, brands and companies work with Instagrammers all the time. They offer a deal to an Instagrammer and once they agree on the terms, the campaign begins. Most of the time, it’s a single Instagram post on influencer’s Instagram account with a “paid sponsorship” status.

You may end up finding Instagrammers that have 5k to 10k following, and they would charge a nominal fee to do a paid post for your brand. You can always go through their posts first and check out the engagement factors such as likes and comments on average. If you could afford to work with bigger Instagrammers, for example, who have 100k or more followers, you’d have to pay more for those campaigns. The idea is to come up with low-budget social media tactics that turn things around for your business.

3. Send PR Packages to Vloggers

I don’t know how big of a YouTube fan you are, but I’m a vlogger. So I have received PR packages and often get emails about PR packages too. In other words, I hardly have 7k subscribers on YouTube and I get asked for PR packages. You won’t believe what would happen if you have 50k or more subscribers.

So keeping the personal experience in mind, I’d highly recommend finding local vloggers on Facebook and YouTube and talk to them about PR packages. Some might ask for sponsored deals and a few of them would be okay without being getting paid. They might be happy with getting free stuff from you with no strings attached. It depends on your financial strength whether or not you want to work with vloggers that ask for a fee for showcasing your PR package to their audience, but the PR package is a fantastic social media strategy.

4. Run a $5 Facebook Ad Campaign

It may seem a little cliche advice that “go and run a $5 ad campaign on Facebook,” but there is no harm in testing social media advertising. The reason I said a $5 ad campaign is because you may have to test out Facebook ads for three to four times before you figure out loads of things on the platform. It’ll be better off if you spend $20 to understand this medium of social attention instead of running a one-time $1000 ad campaign.

Above all, we’re discussing low-cost social media marketing strategies, anyway. So you can try out $5 ad campaigns on Facebook to learn and polish your social media marketing skills.

5. Put Out Behind-the-Scenes Videos on YouTube

Get your creative juices flowing because I’ve got some crazy ideas for you, my friends. YouTube audience loves funny, personal, lively, and educational content. So creating behind-the-scenes videos would be very interesting for your prospective clients and followers to get a sneak peek of what’s going on at your workplace.

The team behind the popular blog and podcast Social Media Examiner did exactly this. They created a behind-the-scenes video series called “The Journey” and released it on YouTube.

Gary Vaynerchuk is famous for documenting his meetings, office work, events, travels, and other work-related stuff. He came up with the idea of documenting over creating content, which a lot of people follow and admire.

You never know how it could work out for you. People do like to know others’ experiences, cultures, and methodologies. So behind-the-scenes video series could turn out to be a great social media marketing tool.

6. Write Articles on LinkedIn, Medium, and Facebook

People always underestimate the power of publishing articles on LinkedIn, Medium, and Facebook. The best part is that you can repost your blog posts on the above-mentioned platforms. These social media channels provide your written content attention, viewership, and engagement. Maybe, your blog post hasn’t attracted many audiences on the blog, but it performs better on these social media platforms.

If you aren’t interested in writing articles, then you can always ask your social media manager or content writer to do that for you. If you aren’t publishing written content on your blog, consider publishing articles on LinkedIn, Medium, and Facebook.

7. Publish Sponsored Blog Posts on the Blogs

If you’re thinking what the heck is a sponsored blog post, it means you haven’t had a chance to come across sponsored posts. Brands and businesses reach out to the blogs that have relevant audiences and sponsor the blog posts. It adds a sponsored link on the top or at the bottom of the article. Bloggers get paid for sponsored blog posts.

It may cost $50 to $1000 per sponsored blog post. You can make the most of this low-cost engagement strategy for social media marketing. Not only is it an attention-seeking plan, but it could also bring prospective clients to your business.

8. Start an Instagram Hashtag

Starting an Instagram hashtag means launching a campaign. There are different ways to engage people or entice them to take action. Using a specific hashtag could be a way of connecting with interested people. Influencers often ask questions with a specific hashtag and answer to the tweets with their hashtag in them. Some brands start their hashtag on Instagram to build a community on the platform.

Hashtags are free to create and use. However, you can promote a hashtag on Twitter through Twitter ads as well as insert a hashtag in Facebook ads. It’s safe to say that creating and utilizing a hashtag is quite an underrated social media engagement strategy.

9. Do a Monthly Giveaway

How about a monthly giveaway? Let me tell you that giveaways always attract people and also bring inactive followers back. It also depends on how good you are at pulling this off. If you post once in the last week of the month about the giveaway that’s happening on the first of the next month, you won’t get much attention. Instead, you can develop a Facebook group and keep followers posted on the giveaway. Plus, involve your email subscribers and followers on Twitter and LinkedIn as well.

What giveaways do is that they attract people. The audience knows that you aren’t selling anything, but instead, you’re giving something away. There are two key elements of running a successful giveaway campaign. First is the product you’re giving away, and the second is how effectively you promote your giveaway. So try giving away products that your audience is likely to pay attention to when you design your giveaway campaign.

10. Do Joint Live Streams

Have you ever considered doing a joint live stream with someone on Facebook or Instagram? Most of you haven’t thought about it. Well, experts and brands collaborate all the time. You can invite friends or clients over to your social media channels and talk about their struggles, successes, and methodologies. You may end up attracting audiences that don’t pay attention to you. The secret sauce of joint live streams is that both persons go live when they do joint live streams and their followers get to see them interact on live video.

Your Thoughts

So these were my 10 low-cost social media marketing techniques that are either free or require a little money. I came up with this idea because most social media marketing advice ends up on paid advertising or hiring a professional who does all the stuff for you. So I tried to come up with a bunch of ideas that could revitalize your social media engagement and reach.

What else would you like to add to these social media marketing strategies?

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19 Comments

  1. Hi Hassaan, This is all good ideas, I never heard of the YouTuber sponsorship one before 🙂 I’ve mostly used the Facebook one and sponsored posts in the past. Those were pretty good. I’m also thinking about sponsorships – places, events you can sponsor and get a link as well on their website for it. Those tend to happen organically.
    Thanks for the other tips here Hassaan and have a great day!

    1. Hi Lisa,

      Thanks so much for your comment. You must have a YouTube presence if you’re already using Facebook video. I’m glad you found out about video sponsorship on YouTube.

      You’ve done incredibly well with blog post sponsorship, which I always admire. Maybe, you should write about how to get blog post sponsorship someday. It’ll be a good read.

      Thanks, again.

  2. Hi Hassaan

    Such great ideas.

    I like that they mostly center around collaboration with others.

    You have to build a tribe of people interested in what you do, and work with them.

    You just can’t do everything yourself, but with others, your message gains momentum.

    -Donna

    1. Hi Donna,

      Exactly!

      A tribe, an inner circle, or a loyal fan base — all these things go a long way.

      I wanted to shatter a myth that one has should have hundreds of dollars to spend on social media marketing to get started. See, working with a local YouTuber or collaborating with an Instagrammer or doing live streams with relevant people could turn things around for us.

      I firmly believe in all those strategies.

      Thanks for stopping by and reading the blog post.

  3. Hi Hassaan,
    Video has taken the digital marketing space by storm, generating more traffic and engagement. In fact, a study also revealed that video is the lead generator. Soit makes sense why brands are integrating video content marketing into their digital marketing toolbox.
    Moreover, all the other ideas in your article are fantastic.

    1. Hi Moss,

      Thanks so much. I do not doubt the importance of video. It’s opening up a new set of opportunities for content creators, freelancers, and video professionals.

      The features like live streaming, video scheduling, and premiere are the stepping stone to this new digital marketing stage.

      Thanks for the comment again.

  4. I have read all of these low cost social media marketing tactics and they are very useful and worth reading. keep sharing such informative information for Us.

  5. Hey Hassan,
    I had been working as a freelance social media marketer, but today I learned a few critical points on social media marketing from this post. So, thank you very much for sharing.
    You have mentioned several influencer marketing methods here. I hope you’ll write more about Instagram and Youtube influencer marketing in the future because I think YouTube and Instagram are the most active platforms these days.

    1. Hi Nirodha,

      Thank you so much for giving your feedback. I’m so happy you got something out of this blog post.

      I’m paying close attention to Instagram and YouTube. You’ll surely find me talking about these social media platforms in the future.

      I have been busy lately as I was working on my new book.

      Thanks so much, again, for your comment.

  6. Hassaan,

    Really, sponsoring the local YouTubers is an exciting one and I haven’t tried it. As Lisa says, I have got familiar with Facebook Ads, sponsor ads, etc for my clients too. Thanks for your ideas to develop a low-cost social media marketing strategy – that works too!

    1. Hi Sathish,

      I’m glad you liked these ideas, especially the first one.

      Let me know if you try that out. I recently saw a Bollywood-YouTuber collab, which validated my point.

      All the best.

  7. Hi hasaan, thankyou for these helpful tips. I think I need to explore medium more. I am currently not using this.

    1. Hello Sidra,

      You must check out Medium. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment.

      I’d highly recommend reading my next blog post on blog commenting.

      Thanks!

  8. Good read. For marketing Instagram and facebook but they are less efficient for sale coversion. Even some influencers results are not good. Now Tiktok is a new platform for better results in less time.
    Thanks

  9. Honestly, the post is filled with a lot of useful and informative social marketing tactics, some of which I haven’t understood before, Hassaan. Let me begin by thanking you for analyzing that it’s productive and traffic-driving to republish written blog posts on platforms like LinkedIn, Medium, and Facebook. I considered this to be one of my favorite strategies on the list above but there’s more for me to understand about it.

    Now, I want to ask you this highly-pressing question; when you mentioned that I can republish already-written blog posts on Medium, Facebook, and LinkedIn, does it mean this particular post, for example, can be republished on any of those platforms even without editing or changing some phrases at all? Won’t it be marked “Duplicate” by the moderators or Google? I need to understand the process, Hassaan. Earnestly awaiting your response!

    Sierra Morgan

    1. Hi Sierra,

      I’m not an expert on search engine matters, but I believe if you link out to the original source, it doesn’t hurt your ranking, so please check this: https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/15323237?hl=en)

      In this case, we’re republishing on LinkedIn, Medium, and Facebook that don’t restrict content repurposing. I won’t recommend re-publishing any content on your blog. Instead, use your blog’s content and put out on LinkedIn, Medium, and Facebook, and mention the original source at the bottom.

      Have a good day.

      1. Thank you so much for the recommended link, Hassaan! I think I’ve got a hint to what I wanted to understand from your last response, For as much as I know I needed to repurpose my blog content using those platforms, and you’ve made me realize it doesn’t hurt SEO with the original source linked to, it’s time to start implementing this strategy. Thank you once again for the useful post!

        Sierra Morgan

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