What are the negative impacts of social networking sites?
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). 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. Here are some of the lesser known negative impacts of social networking sites for businesses and how to avoid these problems.
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. 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. 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…? 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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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.