Social Media Can Kill Your Business, If You Ignore It

According to the CMO Council, 28% of marketers have reduced their advertising budgets in order to increase their digital marketing activities. Yet, many businesses still overlook Social Media Marketing. In order to avoid digital pitfalls for your brand or business, take a moment to review these ten ways that Social Media can kill your business, if ignored. Disregard at your own risk!

1. Reputation Management. Social Media sites, including Twitter and Yelp, are beginning to dominate Search Engine Results Pages. Companies need to work harder than ever to achieve priority listings on Google, Bing and Yahoo. As tweets and Yelp reviews move up, companies can incorporate their social media profiles into their SEO strategy. As companies claim their brand name on additional social sites like Google+, Pinterest, Vine and Snapchat, they can penetrate search pages and increase their “owned” media footprint. Companies that disregard the connection between social media and SEO relinquish control of rankings and search results pages.

2. Join the Conversation or Be Shut Out. Consumers are engaging in social discussions. Therefore, most brands and products have a social media presence. In order to fully understand the landscape, keywords and conversations, an analysis is needed of your brand and industry’s social media activities. If your brand is omitted from the discussion, you’re allowing a competitor’s brand to move in.

3. Reach & Frequency. According to the Edelman 2014 Trust Barometer Report, average consumers need to hear something at least three times before they believe it. Similarly, traditional advertising guidelines recommend exposing consumers to messaging between 7 and 9 times in order to drive message recall. Social media is a fast and easy way to increase the reach and frequency of a bite-sized message.

4. Targeted marketing. Social Media sites offer expanded targeting capabilities that go beyond other forms of advertising. Facebook, in particular, offers a wide variety of targeting capabilities that go beyond demographics. A few examples include Life Events, Purchasing Behavior, Custom Audience Segments, Remarketing and Lookalike Audiences. Our recent post explores these in further detail.

5. Low-cost advertising. Social Media sites are becoming more focused on advertising options for businesses. As such, they are experimenting with different products and options. By keeping their costs low, they offer an interesting opportunity for small businesses to reach an audience at a much lower budget commitment than traditional types of advertising. Facebook offers a low minimum ad spend of $10 per day and Twitter is similar. With expanded targeting and low cost entry, advertising on Social Media is an important way to reach prospects and customers.

6. Announce new products. Once more, thanks to the ability to target audiences with a concise message, Social Media Marketing offers a cost-effective way to announce new products. Smart tactics include sending coupons, creating buzz, demonstration videos and images, gathering feedback and creating a dialogue. Ice cream company, Ben and Jerry’s, offers an impressive example of this concept in the 2014 launch of the “US Core Flavors”.

7. Become a thought leader. Content is king. Businesses are competing on content now more than ever before. LinkedIn’s publishing platform and Google’s Authorship program offer content publishers additional visibility and exposure, potentially positioning them as subject matter experts.

8. Follow Competitors. The social sphere provides an opportunity for competitive research. Companies ignoring this knowledge base are foregoing valuable intel about their competitors including their tone, community, messaging and engagement.

9. Recruit. Jobvite’s recent Social Recruiting Survey indicates that 73% of companies are highlighting their company’s culture via social media. Social media can also be useful for identifying candidates, uncovering mutual connections, and reviewing design or written work product.

10. Crisis Management. Every business owner or CMO fears the dreaded social media fail, such as those by McDonald’s, DiGiorno Pizza, Kenneth Cole, and even the Red Cross. An even scarier prospect, however, is silence in the midst of a crisis. Jay Baer, in a recent blog post, reveals the first step in managing a crisis as “Buying Binoculars”. As Jay notes, it’s hard to manage something if you can’t see it. Joining the conversation (See #2 above) is an important step in managing a crisis online, and – planning for a crisis ahead of time will mitigate the fallout chaos.

Ways to plan ahead include:

– Listening for and monitoring your brand and top keywords
– Distributing company guidelines to the marketing team
– Developing an escalation procedure
– Preparing and gaining approval of responses ahead of time
– Acting transparently and posting policies and FAQ’s publicly
– Knowing when to take it offline

Get involved with Social Media Marketing now, while the industry grows and matures, to ensure reaping the greatest benefits. Contact us today for a free social media evaluation of your brand and competitors. We want to ensure that Social Media does not kill your business!

Looking for more valuable tips and insights about Digital Marketing and Social Media? Check out my other posts at https://konacompany.com/author/kelly/ or connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Your comments are welcome!