Engaging Customers Through Social Media - The Pros and Cons
In any business, you need to create a brand image. However, the question is how can that be done effectively? Well, there is no systematic manual for building a brand image as every business is unique in its own way. Yet, to start with, you need a compact strategic planning for marketing to build a powerful brand image.
It's true that technology has changed the archaic perception of building a brand image from traditional advertising to digital advertising. Social media marketing has emerged as the most cost-effective marketing strategy.
Nowadays, businesses focus on using social media marketing through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc., as these platforms enable them to directly interact with customers. After all, it's the communication with the customers that helps the brand and is a crucial step towards sales. However, it has its disadvantages too.
Understanding the Pros and Cons
To understand the pros and cons of collaborating with customers through social media, we did some scrutinizing and came up with the following insights.
Dealing with the Pros
One of the greatest advantages of social media marketing is that it is highly interactive. You are able to touch base with your customers by using social media proactively. When customers like or follow your page, they publicly endorse your page, helping you in turn to build a brand image at no cost!
You can also get a feel of what your consumers prefer by using keywords or hashtags to your posts. By simply instituting a conversation, you can better conceptualize consumer behavior and plan your strategies likewise. Not only that, it also enables you to understand what your customers think about you, your industry as well as your competitors. The list, however, does not end here. One cannot simply ignore the immense scope of tracking and analytics these sites offer. These tracking tools empower you to track the number of page likes, viewership, demographic location, etc., so that you can optimize your products.
The Cons
Yes, in spite of all these advantages, there are disadvantages too. The first and foremost is criticism! It's inevitable. Customers will criticize your products and opt for the social media route as it is the most effective tool in spreading awareness.
If a customer is not too pleased with your product, they can vent their anger on these social media sites, negatively affecting your brand reputation. It takes just a click of the mouse before all the posts go viral and people start sharing and commenting on them instantly. Another major threat is security. Once your posts and contents are shared publicly, all content is at risk of being reproduced very easily, so you need to protect all your publications.
Conclusion
It's true that customers will criticize and try to pull you down. You should take this as an opportunity to fix the problem publicly with empathy. Nothing is an instant band-aid fix. Considering the fact that advantages outweigh the disadvantages, you need to impeccably work on it and turn every threat into opportunity.
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Submitted on: 2014-11-17 21:23:22