3. Using social media for business purposes
can be awesome if you know what you
are doing. After all, Google+ got to 100
million users in just 7 months and
Pinterest is threatening to eclipse that
record. Facebook should have over 1
billion users by the end of 2012 and
YouTube has more than 3 billion views a
day (more than 1 trillion a year).
4. If part of your marketing strategy
includes advertising where the people
are, then utilizing multiple social
networking sites for business is a good
idea. However, again, you must
understand what you are doing in
order to take advantage of this
strategy, otherwise it will be a waste of
time, energy, and money.
5. Here are some of the lesser known
negative impacts of social
networking sites for businesses
and how to avoid these problems.
6. Negative Impacts of Social
Networking Sites | Knowledge
Do you understand the possibilities
that exist with social networking
sites? Most small business owners
think of social media as something that
their teenagers do on their cell
phones.
7. They underestimate what all can be
accomplished with social media,
therefore, one of the negative impacts
of social networking sites for business
is that businesses don’t take it
seriously, don’t educate themselves on
strategies, and the marketing plan
crumbles.
8. The reality is that there is a strategy
and a methodology to implementing a
successful social media
marketing plan. First, what are your
goals? Do you want to increase brand
recognition, increase sales and
revenue, improve customer service,
increase opt ins and subscribers to
your site, improve your site’s SEO,
etc…?
9. Once you determine your goals, there
are several social media management
tools to consider, such as types of
media (blogs, articles, videos, press
release, local search, etc…), pay per
click to your target
audience, engagement tools, and
more.
10. But in order to create a useful social
media marketing plan, you will want to
invest in social media manager
training to better understand what is
possible with social media.
11. Negative Impacts of Social
Networking Sites | Engaging
Traditional marketing teaches us to
broadcast our features and benefits to
the masses and hope that a percentage
of listeners purchase. Carrying this
flawed methodology over to your
social media plan is another one of the
negative impacts of social
networking sites for businesses.
12. Social media provides you with one of
the best opportunities to engage with
others, brand yourself and your
business as experts, answer questions,
and earn business. However, if you
simply put promotional posts on your
Facebook Page asking people to
purchase products, you’ll campaign will
fail.
13. Ask questions, put out pulls, elicit
feedback, write informational blogs,
record ‘how to’ videos relevant to
users, run contests, etc… Be creative
with your engagement strategies and
you will see your goals accomplished.
14. If this is something that you’re not
comfortable with or have the skill set
for, then you may want to consider
what a social media marketing
firm can do for you.
15. Negative Impacts of Social
Networking Sites | Time
With a flawed engagement strategy
comes a gross underestimation of the
amount of time needed to run a
successful social media marketing
campaign.
16. One of the negative impacts of social
networking sites is that while it’s free
to use, it does take time to engage, and
this time generally costs money, in the
form of opportunity costs, hiring an
employee, or outsourcing it to
someone else. If you are looking to
implement this type of strategy, make
sure that you allocate time to engage.
17. Also, it is a good idea to invest in time
saving technologies, such as a social
media dashboard, in order to help you
become more efficient in your
engagements. The easier and faster
engaging is, the more likely you are to
continue doing it.