Some of the biggest complain coming from start-ups and even quite established medium size businesses is they have no time they use social media. Then you can still hear the good old “our audience is not on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram”. The newest cliché is “you cannot achieve impact on social media without paid ads”

There are plenty of ways you can make even direct sales on social media, without paying a dime. Here are six things, I bet your business is not doing right now to win on social. Prove me wrong, please!

1.Automation.

You want thousands of followers on Instagram and Twitter? You are complaining that you don’t have time? Welcome to 2017 and start using automation.

There are solutions for automatic direct message to all new followers. Think of how many conversations you can start online, if you were just sending a warm and personal-sounding message to every new follower?

2.Scheduling

You can schedule all your posts for the upcoming week on a Sunday night with a smart phone. All the apps I am talking about have a free version. Forget about Hootsuite, which is an ideal post scheduler, but costs money. You can start with zero investment.

3.Prospecting

I recently received a brilliant B2B pitch on LinkedIn by a digital product sales rep. Firstly, he had taken the time to research what I am doing and he knew my company in detail. He had run a report on our website UX and shared some insights with me. I am sure that he had already contacted tens of other managers online. Do you think your chance of doing a sale increases or decreases, if you approach the ten times more decision makers on social media? No brainer.

4.Competitor research

The best way of finding who is in your sphere and what they are doing is just by following them online. You will know about their webinars, events, offers, new products. You will never be in the dark about industry updates. See how often they post, how they interact with their customers. You might get ideas of what to do or not to do.

5.Sharing free knowledge

The best way to provide value on social is to share free knowledge. Don’t be afraid to give away good practices and ideas for free. You are only going to gain trust, followers and genuine interest in your brand(Find out more about online branding here) 90% of the people are not going to implement your advice anyway. Eventually, some of them will hire you, because you have got a name as an expert in your field.