Social media is an unavoidable part of online marketing today. It is linked with SEO, with advertising, with branding, with customer service and e-commerce and it is making businesses more effective and more accessible to their customers. Millions of web users – potential and existing customers – are members of social media networks, and social media offers a low cost, low risk, and high reward method of marketing online.
We’re going to discuss a few areas and examples which could cause social media to work against you, and negatively affect your business and its reputation.
#1 – Being Unresponsive
For example, an existing client tweets an issue and nobody responds to them – the client gets frustrated, annoyed, tweets their feelings and worst case scenario you lose a customer. At best, you just look bad. Ignoring feedback, questions and problems instantly gives a bad impression of your customer service skills. Fair enough that a random question out of the ether gets missed from time to time, but you need to look after your existing customers, and in turn they will work for you with great word of mouth recommendation.
#2 – Ignoring Negative Feedback
You can’t just respond to your fans and your evangelists. By all means, reward and interact with those who say nice things about you, but it’s never a good idea to ignore the badmouthing ones completely. Of course you need to be selective here – the mindless, spammy negative comments that everyone receives in some shape or form can be safely ignored – they’re just looking to get a rise out of you. But the ones that genuinely have an issue, feel hard done by, feel let down by your company – those are the ones you need to engage with, apologise to, and try to work out a solution or compensation. You really can turn a negative into a positive and completely U-turn a potentially damaging situation.
#3 – Treating Social Media as an Experiment
Some advice, in the form of an oldie but a goodie: “You get out what you put in.” Social media marketing can be of great benefit to your business, your brand, your online strength. It can boost traffic and sales and visibility. But it won’t do all that for you if you simply set up a Twitter account, chat a bit, and leave it at that. It won’t do all that for you if you sign up to a thousand different social networks but effectively contribute to none. Like any other marketing strategy, it needs planning, observation, time, monitoring and focus to be a success. Don’t treat it like something on the side – social media, whether you like it or not, is a big part of internet marketing today.
#4 – Thinking Short Term Rather than Long Term
Though it’s true that social media works in the here and now, in ‘realtime’, you shouldn’t assume that your view should be restricted to the present. When building a social media marketing strategy for your business, you need to think about your aims and goals, what you want to achieve, how you intend to implement your plans. Short term goals are great too, but if you don’t set targets, it will be impossible to track your progress and your success.
#5 – Ignoring the Repercussions your Actions have on your Brand
Whatever you post online, whatever you tweet or share, represents you and your company. Though social media revolves around personalisation, conversation and being genuine and honest with your customers – that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be professional. Keep personal and professional accounts (and opinions) separate. Social networking has the power to have a huge positive or negative effect on your brand’s reputation. Treat everyone you talk to as a potential customer and treat them kindly!
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