If you are contemplating the pros and cons to social media online then there are many things to consider such as whether or not you will be using social media for your personal use or for your business. With both there are certain advantages and disadvantages and this can make navigating the social media sphere tricky. This article aims to help you if you are a business and you are considering taking your organisations brand online.
Business Social Media
If you are a business and you are looking to utilise social media as a tool to get the message about your organisation across then there are things that need to be considered before you take the big leap.
Engage your consumers:
If you think that by just opening a Facebook or Twitter account will engage your consumers and get you more business, then you will find yourself falling short. Social media is a way in which to interact with your consumers like never before. Old marketing methodologies believed in speaking at their consumers rather with them and there has been a giant shift in the balance of power as now consumers are more in control than ever before and demand multidirectional conversations with the brands that they bring in to their lives.
Generate relevant content:
Make sure that the conversations that you are having with your consumers are relevant. There is nothing more frustrating than when you Facebook and Twitter feeds are bombarded by useless information that a brand is putting on their social media accounts. You need to ensure that what you are saying is relevant to the consumers’ lives rather than what you think they want to know. This requires some investigation on the part of the organisation in to what makes their consumers really tick and what exactly they want to hear from brands.
Make it more than a channel through which people can complain:
In South Africa, the majority of brands have yet to fully grasp the power of social media and as a result they find themselves having to deal with complaints about their products or services on these social media sites. This can jeopardise the brand in its entirety as the other consumers who see the constant complaints will start to doubt the brand and this may lead to switching. This therefore means that you should respond to all complaints quickly and efficiently in order to minimise the damage to your brand’s reputation.
Make it something that consumers want to talk about:
A huge pro to social media is that if you get it right, your business can grow from strength to strength. Consumers want brands that are open to conversations and are willing to take the time to actually listen to what they are saying. Ultimately happy customers talk and so not only will you be able to continually make your current customers happy, but through word of mouth you will end up getting more and more customers to carry on the conversation with.
Make sure you have a strategy before you begin
One of the mistakes that organisations make when they go digital and take their brand to the social networks is that they do not fully grasp the strategies that need to be implemented in order to make your online presence a success. The best advice I can give any organisation is to hire a digital marketing agency that can help you start your social media adventure and provide you with all the best ways in which to make your organisation’s social media profile the best that it can be.
Although navigating the pros and cons of social media online may seem like something that is completely out of your depth, there really is no excuse to not meeting your consumers where they want you to be. The reality is that the Digital Age is upon us and only the organisations and brands that move forward with their consumers will survive these turbulent times.