Social Media is a low cost, trusted media source that makes a significant impact to the bottom line – it is an essential and integral part of any digital marketing strategy. The real benefits of using Social Media for business are:
- Customers will market your product / service for you – people want to be helpful if they can recommend a solution to a friend’s problem they will (provided your product offers a solution and you make it easy for them to make the recommendation)
- Customers trust recommendations from other customers – in some cases more than editorial content
- Customer recommendations such as Facebook “Likes” or “Fans” endorse a product / service by indicating it is worthwhile
- Social Media users are used to a stream of messages, invitations, promotions and other interactions – once you have captured their imagination enough for them to ‘like’ or ‘follow’ you, then they are pretty loyal which allows you to send an endless stream of relevant marketing messages
An endless stream of relevant marketing messages. I thought I’d repeat that as this is the point that is often missed. Once Social Media users have made the leap to follow you they are happy to receive your marketing messages – never has there been a better marketing medium.
Cons
Many organisations are scared of Social Media. “How do we control our Facebook page? What if someone trashes the brand?” Well, who cares? I hate McDonald’s. Given the opportunity, during any discussion on food, I will state that I hate McDonald’s. It makes no difference to the people I know who like McDonald’s – they might even agree with me when I say it but totally ignore me when they get the urge to have one. Heck, I probably eat there once a year and you know what, if I was in Thailand with Delhi belly, I’d probably eat at McDonald’s until my tummy cleared up. It’s only a Facebook page. The other thing is, if in Social Media you discover your customers don’t like XYZ, you can fix it – at least you know about the problem.
If it is on your own site – most blogs allow you to moderate comments before they go live. Facebook applications only send feeds of your status updates not the contributions of other users. The ‘control factor’ has become an unnecessary concern – people can and probably are already talking about your product or service online. By embracing Social Media you can at least respond and be a part of the conversation. Be it through research and development; strategic re-directions or a direct response. Having the resources in place to interact with your fan base should be more of a concern as, with the right strategy, Social Media campaigns tend to fly way beyond expectation.
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Very useful piece when pitching to the senior managers why we should have a social media strategy! really interesting video too.
Glad that you find it useful. As with SEO, a significant amount of an inhouse’s time needs to be dedicated to communicating what you are doing and the successes you are having so as to empower all members of the organisation to help you meet your goals.