Since 1999
Social media has emerged as a strong marketing and advertising tool in the last few years. Be it a start-up company or an established organization, all have their Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin profiles in place to share their every new launch and offers on these social media websites.
Companies ask users to tweet their promotional keywords prefixed by a hashtag (#) and allure them with attractive prizes.
Lured by the prizes and offers, people start to tweet and retweet their hashtag-prefixed keyword – referring to a new product or service. Soon it becomes a trend on Twitter and their target audience gets the information regarding the product and features.No doubt social media marketing is a strong promotional tool but it has also got a dark side associated to it. With a host of benefits it offers, there are some pitfalls that may become a nightmare for the marketers if not addressed.
We have come up with this blog in continuation to our previous blog, “Importance of Social Networking in Business Development”. Disadvantages of Social Media:
To get maximum benefit out of the social media, one has to proactively participate in it. You have to post or tweet frequently and interact with the people. Social media is all about online interaction with your target audience. You have to answer to the queries and convince them about the effectiveness of your products. All this consume a lot of productive time and with no direct tool to measure the effectiveness of social media in web marketing, one may turn his back towards it.
Solution: Work out a neatly outlined Social Media strategy. Here are some easy tips:
1. Check out the best times for social media postings. Each social media provides you its own insights. You don’t need deep knowledge of social media marketing to deconstruct the analytics. You can simply go to Insights to check. 2. Plan out your post content including pictures and text copy. Use the scheduling tools to schedule them as per the best times your optimum audience is online.
Facebook Insights that indicate the best times to post
When you use social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for your product promotion, people get direct access to post their views. There is equal probability of getting both positive and negative comments. Even your competitors can post a few highlighting the negatives. Though you can decrease the impact of negative comments through quick response, you cannot nullify it.
Solution: Trolling is a common hazard in social media. To avoid getting trolled or being hounded on your Facebook or Twitter, be careful with the content you post.
1. Establish a commenting and community policy – it helps you moderate comments without ruffling feathers. Outline the kind of comments that are allowed on your website and social media accounts. 2. Make light of the situation – Using humor to battle trolls always helps. 3. Don’t approve offensive comments in your website. 4. As moderator you can delete the offensive comments from your social media or website post – although this is two-way sword. Deleting comments means deleting the discussion thread below it. 5. Stick to the facts and make corrections. Its always good to set the record straight but alongside you may also run the risk of feeding the troll. Its critical to maintain the balance and close the communication with a firm reply.
Recently, following a false tweet from the Twitter account of the Associated Press, the Associated Press had to accept that their Twitter account had been hacked. The tweet that read “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured” sent a shock wave across the world. If hackers can break into social media accounts of renowned companies, the others’ are at risk too. I am not against social media but I advocate the fair use of social media when it comes to web marketing. I would only like the companies to address the loopholes of the social media so that they can draw just benefits out of it. Remember, social media is not magic gem that can help even a bad company with low-quality products and poor servicing to make profits. The first and the final way to ensure the success of your business will always be to ensure quality of the end product and offer complete customer-satisfaction.
Solution: Hacking is a constant threat. You may wake up one morning to find your website shut down with a hacker’s message displaying on your domain url. WordPress and all other web and ecommerce platforms offer strong hacking prevention tools. Consult a professional website developer or ecommerce development company to install firewalls and anti-hacking mechanisms in your website. Advantages of Social Media Marketing Cost Effective
Most importantly, social media sites are the most cost-effective marketing tool to promote your brand in front of existing and potential customers. It doesn’t cost anything to pin an image, tweet, or post a link on Facebook.
Powerful Tool for Brand Engagement
However, if used wisely, social media can become the most powerful tool to increase brand recognition, improve your website’s search engine rankings, boost traffic to your website and ensure higher conversion rates.
Target Specific Audience
Social media marketing lets you target audiences more effectively. For instance, Facebook ads are “geo-targeted” that let you choose location, gender, language, age and reach the specific, targeted audience. Nobody can deny the viral nature of social media. If a user likes your post, he can spread it farther within his own network, making the post reach a larger number of audience within a short span of time. The benefits of social media will always outweigh the disadvantages. The mantra lies in using the power of social media wisely and effectively.
