The Pros and Cons of Using Social Media in Business

While there are many benefits to using social media in business, there are also drawbacks that entrepreneurs and other business owners should be aware of and might not be.  Since social media has become the norm and has in some ways seems to have taken over both the professional and personal world, in our euphoria and obsession with it, we sometimes overlook the negatives of it.  Since the inception of the Internet, business have constantly had to re-evaluate how they reach and stay connected to customers and consumers alike.  While using social media for business is a must these days, it’s also a must that you look at the risk versus reward of using it.  There are so many social media sites out there that it’s often hard to find the best ones for your business.  Let’s take a look at the overall pros and cons of social media in general as well as those of some major social media sites.

The most obvious benefit of using social media platforms for business is the ability to instantaneously interact with your target audience.  From a business perspective, this allows companies to get immediate feedback on the goods, products and services they are offering.

Another major benefit of social media is the capability to build brand loyalty and a large following.  Of course, the key is how much engagement you are getting and so it seems there is a need to post new and original content each and every day.  That said, you need to post in a manner that gets peoples’ attention and gets them interested in what you have to say.

One of the great things about social media is that it allows your business to get the word out with low costs unlike using traditional marketing platforms such as television and print ads.  Additionally, the benefits of social media can last for years.  In the past, only companies that had the most money to spend on marketing won but today, the companies that put out the best social media content are often the winners and again, this can be done for little or no cost.

Additionally, many companies aren’t willing to put in the time and effort to branding via social media but if your company is, then you will stand out from the crowd.

That said, one of the negatives of social media is that unless you are on top of your game and are providing new and exciting content, you put yourself in a tenuous situation where you open your company up to getting negative reviews by the general public.  If you provide poor products or services, then social media is definitely not the place for you.  You have to make sure your customer service is the best it can be in order to make social media effective for your brand.  Remember not all PR is good PR so if your product is weak, then negative reviews are likely to follow and no business wants that.

There’s also an unctuous side to social media.  While it might not be true, some people find the need to post negative reviews about a company for no reason.  Maybe they are disgruntled employees or just slimy people in general.  Believe it or not, people are often hired by competitors to post negative reviews about your business on various social media platforms.

Another con of using social media for business is that you don’t often reap the rewards right away.  It takes time and effort to get your message out there virtually.  Often, it can take months before you see a positive bump in business and new customers while using social media as your main strategy rather than immediately.

Social media platforms often change quickly.  How many times in recent months has Facebook changed their interface?  If you’re not in the know about the changes, you can incorrectly use the platforms which hurts you in the long-run and grand scheme of things.

Social media often reduces the amount of face-to-face interaction you have with customers.  Often the best way to build a following and brand loyalty is through one-on-one communication which can’t be done behind a computer screen.

Then there are the pros and cons of the most well-known social media sites.  First off, most business usually turn to Facebook as a start.  While it most definitely has an upside, it also have downside.  The benefits of Facebook is that it has well over one billion users worldwide so that gives businesses a great reach to their target audience.  Facebook offers advertising and very specifically, as well to certain age groups and other drill downs.  It’s easy to promote posts with the “like” and “share” buttons.  The cons are that it takes a significant amount of times to build a following and maintain a page.  You need to have a reasonable advertising budget to use it effectively as well.  Often you need a staff member who can monitor statistics and page traffic and respond to posts on a regular basis.

Next, there’s Twitter.  It is primarily used as one-way communication for delivering short and real-time information.  One pro is that you can choose to auto-follow people who are interested in your niche.  Twitter also offers statistical data that shows you what’s happening as it’s happening such as the number of “retweets” your posts are getting.  You can also automate your tweets.  The most obvious and major drawback is that posts are limited to solely 140 characters unless you use sites such as Twitlonger.  It can be hard to track conversations as often posts are replied to so quickly with questions and a flood of information that users can often feel up ending ignored.  The biggest drawback, however, is that unless you are posting quite often, your tweets can easily get lost in your followers’ timelines when they follow thousands of people.  When that’s the case, it’s hard for people to view the content you are posting.

Of course, there’s well-known LinkedIn which is used mainly for creating connections for professional networking.  The pros are that it offers massively rich content for details of companies and individuals’ backgrounds.  You can easily make contacts and research company information.  That said, with a free account you get merely 10 “in-mails” and in order to increase that, you need to pay which can become very expensive.  Additionally, if you try and connect with too many people at a time and they reject your invitations, you can be penalized by the platform.

YouTube is a great virtual way to interact with consumers and a very rich, effective way of sending messages as people enjoy visuals.  One pro is that you can offer explanative tutorials.  It also has the largest viewership of any site and is the second largest search engine next to Google which you may be unaware of because it is owned by Google which allows all its content to be indexed in the Google search engine.  A major con is that each video is limited to 15 minutes or less unless your channel gets so many followers that you are upgraded.  I have a very successful channel and so I was granted permissions for videos longer than 15 minutes but it takes time to build that success.  Lastly, a major con is that you cannot use your own ad network.

Lastly, many companies rely on blogs as we do once a week.  A major pro is that it’s great for SEO purposes.  It’s also a great way to engage your target audience and create a conversation with consumers by giving them value-added information which helps increase brand value.  Additionally, it’s easy to post more content.  The biggest negative is that it’s time consuming.  You also have to think smart and make sure you are posting new and original content every time you post a blog.  There’s also the potential to invite criticism.

So what have you learned here today?  With everyone pushing social media and with it often being a necessity to the success of your business, did you realize there were also vast cons?  How have you avoided those cons?  Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts!

Here are some articles you might want to check out about the pros and cons of using social media in business.

“Pros and Cons of Using Social Media”: http://www.ftadviser.com/2013/10/10/ifa-industry/your-business/pros-and-cons-of-using-social-media-SkbvID6nN1vpXodkEQtjeL/article.html

“The Impact of Social Media in the Workplace Pros and Cons”: http://www.ftadviser.com/2013/10/10/ifa-industry/your-business/pros-and-cons-of-using-social-media-SkbvID6nN1vpXodkEQtjeL/article.html

“Pros and Cons of Social Media for Small Business”: http://growmybiz.com/pros-and-cons-of-social-media-for-small-business/

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