Social media is an online platform that enables users to share information with each other. It is an interactive channel of communication. The social media network offers a business a lucrative opportunity to build its brand awareness. Digital marketing through social media allows businesses to overcome the barriers of traditional marketing. However, one must be aware of social media advantages and disadvantages while using it for company branding and promotion concisely for effective application.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is a process of communicating with the target audience through social media platforms. Publishing the information of the new launch of the product, receiving feedback from customers, or interacting with them by providing useful information. Running a social media campaign makes the company aware of potential improvements and drawbacks of the product.
Platform of Social Media Marketing
Digital marketers promote businesses by using various social media marketing platforms and engaging people in interactive communication. The most popular platforms of social media marketing are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Pinterest. However, one must have to understand the distinct social media advantages and disadvantages of each platform.
Social Media Skills for Organizational Success
Social media marketing ensures an organization’s strong online presence. It helps organizations to grab new opportunities in the market. Social media skills are essential for creating and maintaining brand promotion. Adopting the right social media tools and knowing the best social media metrics are paramount to success. Social media provide a base to raise the brand’s voice to a large number of targeted audiences. Here is a list of skills that an organization must consider for long-term growth.
Monitor Analytics Tools
The understanding of social media analytics is essential for assessing how the social media posts are performing. Identifying the engagement rate, click-through rate, and cost per click gives the overview of the current trend. This enables organizations to make effective social media strategies.
Measuring ROI
Measuring the ROI gives a thorough summary of how much social media marketing has given in return to a business after investing time, effort, and money in it. ROI can be expressed as specified below.
ROI (%) = (Sales after social media marketing – Cost of social media marketing) / Cost of social media marketing * 100%
Schedule Posts
Scheduling the post through various social media platforms helps to sustain consistency and boosts engagement. The periodical update on the website and social media generates curiosity among readers. You may be unavailable during your peak posting hours, but you can schedule the social media post for subscribers and visitors.
Prepare Social Media Strategy
A long-term plan for building a robust social media strategy is key to attaining higher sales growth. The detailed outline of how a business will use the social media platform for promoting the brands helps a business to achieve its goals. The concrete strategy for social media posts and audience engagement potentially leads to increased traffic and generates more sales.
Top social media advantages and disadvantages
Before investing time in social media marketing, the awareness of the pros and cons of social media platforms is essential for building a strong marketing strategy. There is a dynamic relationship between digital marketing and social media. Digital marketing has gained tremendous success with the rise of social media platforms. Hence, understanding the social media advantages and disadvantages before application is vital for every business success.
Advantages of social media marketing
The potential impact of social media on branding and promotions is classified as below.
Effective Communication
A social media campaign improves the relationship between the customers and business organization by maintaining an instant communication platform. It allows people to stay connected and raise concern over any issue. Sharing life events, photos, or videos of using a product makes a business understand what people have in their minds regarding their product.
Quick delivery of Information
Social media platforms enable users to spread information more quickly to the interested audience. Any news on product launches, company events, or promotional campaigns is readily made available by quick announcement to the public. The real-time information sharing helps to make informed decisions for any business.
Maximum Reach
The social media platform provides a wide scope of reaching the maximum number of people quickly by the inbuilt features of Like, Share, Comment, Hashtag, and Tag. The social media platform uses the algorithm of promoting content where users have maximum engagement and spreads trending content through its wide network base.
Build Community
The formation of online communities shares similar interests and encourages people to engage in effective communication. Sharing a piece of information in a social media group, page, forum, or any community connects people more quickly and inspires them to share their thoughts. Building a user community for branding helps businesses to target the niche market they are aiming for.
Brand Recognition
Sharing newsletters, social media posts, and promotional videos reflects the features of the products and services a business is offering to its customers. Moreover, it reveals the expertise and core values of the company. The years of existence on the social media platform also ensure credibility and build trust.
Increased web traffic
The engagement of people with social media posts influences them to visit the company website and encourages them to know more about the company. Continuous engagement in social media channels diverts them to various webpages of the company and incurs web traffic that helps in generating potential leads in the future.
Disadvantages of social media marketing
Despite having several advantages, social media platforms suffer from major drawbacks that a business needs to consider before making any decision.
Misinformation
The social media platform shares the information rapidly through its wide network base. So, any misleading information creates confusion and impacts people adversely. The false information creates adverse effects on public opinion and impacts negatively on brand image.
Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying has harmful consequences that can have an intense effect on a brand. Posting or sharing embarrassing information that affects the victim’s emotion and creates harassment. Sharing of any shameful, unhealthy, or falsified content over the community not only generates a negative impression, but it also hurts the common thoughts of a large number of audiences.
Privacy concern
One of the major drawbacks of social media platforms is the privacy concern. Sharing any personal information or any confidential information knowingly or unknowingly potentially damages the sentiment of a person. The inadequate security measures or unauthorized access to social media platforms inhibit data breaches.
Frauds or scams
An increasing number of scammers or hackers pose a potential threat for social media users. They intentionally present falsified information or steal sensitive data for getting undue advantage.
Impact of Social Media, Real-World Example
The impact of social media on business is undeniable. It improves communication, gives new business opportunities, and helps a business to grow in the future. Let’s explore some real-life examples of businesses that implemented social media strategy successfully and gained a competitive advantage significantly.
Aprocotton
It worked massively for building an effective social media strategy for content creation and advertising. Its advertising campaign draws impressions from various social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram and boosts the sales.
KFC
The funny memes, attractive captions, and fun-driven social media posts highlight its iconic chicken and attract millions of people. They also run campaigns and contests to engage audiences with their product.
Amul
The iconic humorous Amul Butter Girl posts promote its dairy product artfully to a large section of the audience through various social media channels. Besides the impressive ads, the wonderful commentary catches the attention of everyone.
Zomato
The funny memes and reels in the local language with powerful captions on its social media channels make the user feel like they have a reliable food partner. It regularly posts coupon deals and best offers on its social media pages for keeping its fan base updated.
Final Thoughts
The rising momentum of social media platforms encourages businesses to grab the potential benefits of the social media tools. Reaching the maximum number of target audience for brand awareness, digital marketing through social media is paramount for success. However, every business should be aware of social media advantages and disadvantages before making a concise decision for effective application.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1. What are the 5 benefits of social media?
It enhances communication, promotes brands, builds community, quickly shares information, and increases conversion rate.
Q2. How to deal with social media advantages and disadvantages?
Create impactful content with relevant, useful information, and be aware of cyberbullying and privacy concerns by enhancing the security measures.
Q3. What social media platforms are mostly used for digital marketing?
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are widely popular social media platforms.
Q4. Should I give a response to visitors’ comments on social media?
Yes. One should respond to visitors’ positive and negative comments both and appreciate feedback for showing your concern and commitment.
Q5. How often should I post on social media for marketing?
Digital marketers use social media platforms quite often on a daily or weekly basis to make your business active on social media platforms. Regular posting helps to make a strong online presence.
