Social media marketing is a hot topic in marketing and business circles, and for good reason.
With billions of active users, social media platforms boast access to a relevant audience, regardless of the kind of business you have.
While all businesses are advised to build a social media presence and advertise on social media platforms, doing so requires expertise and experience.
Both these traits are displayed by social media agencies.
Despite this, there is a lot of confusion surrounding social media marketing as a service and the costs associated with them.
Sure, a social media agency charges you by the hour. You can even be sure that you are paying for genuine man hours with the help of an employee time tracking software but do you know what you will get in exchange for your marketing dollars?
If you too, have been thinking about marketing and advertising your business on social media and don’t know where you get started, this article is for you.
In this article, we will discuss the various types of social media marketing services, what they entail, and how much you should expect to pay for them.
Without further delay, let us begin:
Content Curation Services
As the name suggests, content curation service providers only republish others’ content through your social media account. Doing this is a proven social media marketing strategy that improves engagement and in the long term, helps you build a loyal social media tribe that loves your content.
Marketing becomes much easier and more cost effective when your business has an online tribe and content curation can help your business build one.
With that said, building a social media following based only off of curated content is a time consuming undertaking. Not to forget, calculating the ROI of the marketing efforts in this case is quite difficult.
That’s why, most social media marketing agencies do not offer content curation as a standalone service. In most cases, content curation is a part of a more holistic social media marketing bundle.
Content Creation Services
While it may sound similar to content curation, content creation is a whole other ball game. It requires understanding of multiple variables and a ton of creativity.
In order to successfully create content for a client, a social media agency must first understand their business, their product/service, and their audience.
Then, the agency will come up with a content plan to establish a presence on relevant social media platforms (where the target audience is present).
Naturally, a lot of content may be produced for this purpose. This content can take the following forms:
- Social media posts
- Infographics
- Blog posts
- Podcasts
- Live video
However, with added innovation, businesses can create a number of other forms of content that may resonate with their audience.
Creating high quality relevant content demands skill and requires time. Therefore, content creation services for social media are comparatively more expensive than content curation services.
Social Media Advertising
Backed by some of the world’s most advanced algorithms, social media platforms have emerged as extremely potent advertising tools.
Thanks to the explosive potential of social media advertising, managed advertising services are expensive.
Creating a funnel, complete with relevant web pages and ads may set you back by $2500. On the other hand, the average cost of managing social media ads for a month is $1000.
Conclusion
As you can see, the cost of social media services is directly related to the kind of results they produce. If you choose the right vendor, even opting for cheaper marketing services can yield great results over time.
