And the question arises again and again: social media – yes or no? What makes sense for my company? I would like to shed some light on this, because there are actually seven good reasons why you shouldn’t strategically align yourself with this trend. You are not alone with it, because even big brands like Marlboro and Augustiner Bier are not represented on social media – and for good reasons.
Table of Contents
1. Because Everyone Does It
Every day I talk to sparring customers about whether social media should play a role in their marketing. This is a good question, because just because social networks are a trend or because there are many institutions and individuals here, it doesn’t have to be the right marketing approach for your company. When it comes to social media, what matters most is your goals, so answer the following questions:
- What do you want to achieve with your marketing?
- What is your target group?
- What added value does your presence on social networks have?
So first determine your marketing goals and define exactly which customer groups are relevant for you.
Two examples: A restaurant can always score well in social networks with user engagement and emotionally charged images of the delicious food. A service provider with a service that requires explanation and is aimed exclusively at a small, very special target group from the B2B sector, on the other hand, is usually less well taken care of in social networks. Clarify these points for yourself.
Social media marketing takes a lot of time and effort (not to say love) to offer clear added value and to inspire users with valuable, own content. Dialog is important. A good dialogue increases user engagement and thus brings useful results for your marketing. Reasons to have to be there can also be reasons not to be there. It depends on your business.
2. Social Media In Everyday Life
The maintenance effort of social media channels should not be underestimated. A high degree of creativity in creating content and posting is just one of the necessary basics. If you do not find enough time for this, you will not be successful and your own expectations will be disappointed. Another important component is communication with customers and followers via social media platforms, which should be taken very seriously.
The content posted should always offer added value and entertain users. This is the only way they can share the posted content (multiplication effects) and talk about it. This takes a lot of time.
You also need good graphics and, of course, a very good graphic designer, the appropriate programs for graphic editing, image licenses, hardware and, and, and … The developed content has to be worked up really well in order to convince on social media and to attract potential customers Encourage customers / followers to interact. Monitoring is the be-all and end-all. Ideally, you need to keep an eye on the activities on your social media channels around the clock, 24 hours a day.
Regular comments and moderation are required on social media. For example, if someone writes badly about your company or posts negative comments – this scares many companies – then you need to react accordingly. If a company does not react, a so-called shit storm can occur.
Every entrepreneur has to be aware of the effort that social media entails and compare this with existing manpower. Or directly consider an agency that will take on this part. If you don’t want to go that far, you may find alternative marketing tools that better suit manpower and budgets. A good example of this is Apple. Apple is practically inactive on social media, and that very consciously. The company justifies this with the fact that the privacy of their customers is very important to them and that is completely contrary to the terms of use of the social media companies.
The advantage is of course the extreme reach via social media marketing and the optimal controlling, which concerns the interaction with your desired customers; In other words, target group-specific advertising and target group-specific networking with people / customers via comments and engagements. Communication with companies and cooperation partners who are sympathetic to the company and who link or repost articles is also important here.
Behind all these things is the great networking idea of social media and of course it offers a huge benefit. So if you want to use this advantage of social media for your company and work in a target-group-specific way, you should of course also have developed target groups:
- Have avatars been developed for customers?
- Was the marketing basically built up strategically?
- Has a “tone of voice” been established, i.e. a guideline on how to communicate in social media?
3. No Good Social Media Marketing Without A Good Basis
Often there are still basics in marketing that should be clarified before a company is present on social media. The basis, i.e. the marketing roadmap, must be in place before you can start defining the social media goals.
Above all, this includes the following basic marketing topics:
- The definition of your target groups
- The development of a brand guideline
- Development of a storytelling or brand story that positions and optimally markets your values and brand.
In short, you need a clearly defined path to the goal, a strategy, clarity. To do this, answer the following questions:
- What is actually my company goal and purpose?
- What is my marketing goal?
- What do I want to achieve and what do I expect?
- Who is my target group?
- Where does my target group get information? (Is social media included and if so, which ones
- Platform, after all there is more than one)?
- How should I communicate with my target group (corporate language, tone of
- Voice, you or you)?
- What is important for my target group?
All this preparatory work is necessary in order not to become mindlessly visible. If you haven’t worked out a coherent strategy, a marketing roadmap or your basic homework, you should start with it before you open yourself to new construction sites with social media. Without the right equipment (marketing strategy), every social media activity, no matter how well planned, lacks the basics.
4. The Wrong Expectations: Social Media Is Not An All-Rounder
When I talk to you on social media, many customers think: “Now I’ll register and then everything will work by itself. The real miracle happens and everyone buys from me. ”Or that it is enough to post something once a week so that the online shop is sold out. It is precisely these expectations that are often disappointed. Because that’s not how social media works.
Sustainable social media marketing takes about as long as good search engine optimization. It takes 6 to 9 months of intensive support for the social media channels before the first successes can be seen. This has to be done strategically and very well, but above all it has to be implemented correctly. But before you really get started, a few things should be carefully considered in advance:
- What do I expect from social media?
- What is my business goal?
- What marketing goal do I want to achieve?
- Can I achieve my goal with existing, less time-consuming or smaller marketing channels that I already know about?
5. You Don’t Have To Place Ads – Do You?
Ads have long been an integral part of social media and are often the most important tool for generating new followers and reach. This is already known on Facebook and Instagram, but TikTok and Co. are also following suit. After all, everyone wants to earn a piece of the pie.
What does that mean in plain language? If you want interaction on your channels, you can hardly avoid placing ads. Behind this there are more costs than just those for each click. It is advisable here to get a professional who is familiar with ads on board. The world of social media ads is a very special one, almost like an organism of its own.
6. The Justified Fear Of The Shit Storm
Interaction with customers and followers can be great on social media, filled with nice comments, good reviews and lots of likes. And then there is this one customer who has gone wrong, who just likes to be angry, who had a bad day … Exactly this somewhat belligerent angry man is starting to complain. If such a negative interaction gets out of hand, maybe two or three other customers jump on the bandwagon, the whole thing can quickly develop dynamically.
Does that lead to something positive? No!
That, too, is a risk that I have to take into account and take into account. Simply put, if you are not active on social media, you cannot be drawn into such a shit storm. Nothing is excluded if users can freely post what they want to publish. Here the question arises: are you prepared for it? Do you have a de-escalation strategy to react directly without losing valuable time in which everything could rock up even further ?: If you do not invest enough here to defuse the situation, you run the risk of a small comment becomes a huge shit storm. That means the image damage can be considerable. If interactions get out of hand, immediate action must be taken.
The company Nestle has shown how it is better not to deal with a shit storm: After various posts from Greenpeace on the subject of KitKat, palm oil, orangutans, Nestle
simply switched off the corresponding page after countless angry comments from users. In the end the wrong way to stop the shitstorm. The opposite happened: The videos spread rapidly on the various platforms.
Domino’s Pizza shows that there is another way. After employees of the company had published an unsavory video, the company reacted promptly: The managing director apologized credibly and thanked the fans who had pointed this out. This professional and authentic response was favorably received on social media.
7. Rapid Changes
Our lives have changed tremendously in the last 60 years. It’s gotten faster. It has not been any different in the last 15 years with social networks. They are developing at a rapid pace.
Also Read: The 5 Success Factors Of Video Content
