Not everyone has the money for advertisements, especially now that the economy is hard for most people and it's even harder on those with small businesses. But the fact remains that business owners most especially the small and medium scale businesses need to advertise and market their products the best way they can. Those who have money for advertising can either pay social media influencers or use targeted advertisements that are offered by the social media platforms themselves.

Not having money for advertisements should never stop anyone from giving the business the right exposure that it needs to have a fair chance of being successful. And these are 3 simple ways one can advertise/market on social media without having to pay any money and they include:

1. Support the influencers:

People normally see influencers as people that barley needs support or those that have all the support that they need but that's not true. These influencers have worked so hard to build a brand online for themselves and they are always doing anything possible to make sure they sustain and keep growing that brand, which normally takes a lot from them as human beings.

So if you are a business owner that is looking for free publicity what you need to do is to look out for those influencers that you would want to help you push your brand, especially those with a history of helping to promote small businesses and start by supporting them massively; comment positively on every post they make and if you want to disagree with them, do it respectfully.

Make sure your comments are well written and constructive because generic comments don't count. You have to also be sure to always comment very fast like you have to be among the first 5 people to drop a comment on their posts.

Keep supporting them consistently for at least a month for them to be able to notice you — sometimes they can notice you earlier or later. Of course, it's a long shot but it's better than nothing. And if they finally notice you they will surely make it known, by replying to your comments or liking it. If they reply to your comments most social media platforms normally highlight those comments that the author replied to or liked and that gives you or your business handle visibility.

On Twitter, most small business owners do drop flyers and pictures of their products on posts made by influencers begging for a retweet. They believe that they can one day be lucky and the influencer will randomly retweet them, forgetting that these are humans who also recognize who is on their side and who isn't. This means that if they see that you've been supporting, they are more likely to retweet your product than people who only come there just to promote their business.

If an influencer sees that you tagged them in your advertisement posts and they know that you've been supporting them, they are more likely to return the favor than if you just keep tagging them without ever supporting them.

You can even personally ask an influencer to support your business via direct message or on the timeline and a lot will do so, but that will be if they see you as a genuine fan or sometimes it will be after going through your profile and seeing what you've been up to, and if you have always supported them, be rest assured they're likely to support you too. Supporting influencers really means a lot to them because there can't really be an influencer without supporters.

Related: 5 Ways to Build Your Business Through Social Media

2. Use of hashtags and trending keywords:

Hashtags(#) are what people normally search for when they are looking for information on a particular topic on social media. Trending keywords are what people are majorly talking about concerning a particular topic or issue.

People also follow hashtags so they don't get to miss out on any information that passes through the hashtag, but unfortunately, people can't follow a trending keyword, you can only search them and see how much conversation that is going on with the keyword and if it's good enough for you do well to include it in your posts.

As for hashtags, what you have to do is find hashtags that are related to your business and possibly trending, and also with great followers— all three mustn't always be present. Then do remember to include the hashtag when you make a post for that your business. Those hashtags will help put your business in front of people that are actually interested in your business. And the more your business is in people's faces the more aware they are of your product. Also, do well to use those hashtags and keywords to pass great messages and information about your businesses or business in general so you won't just be all marketing and advertising