Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. Social media marketing involves publishing content on your social media profiles, listening to and engaging with your followers, running campaigns or contests, and even doing paid social media advertisements. Businesses can share their content on social media to generate traffic to their websites and, hopefully, sales. The most popular social media platforms today are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat. 

Not sure if social media marketing is right for you and your business? Here’s some pros and cons to help you decide:

PROS:

Affordable

Social media is free! You can create a business account for free and interact with customers and prospects at no cost. Buying ads will cost you, but everything at the basic level is free and available to everyone.

Large Audience

Since social media is free to literally everyone, the audience is huge! This is a major advantage of social media marketing. Promoting your business on social media platforms gives you the potential of reaching millions of people. There is no limit to social media marketing. There are no demographic barriers, because people of all ages, sexes, races, and social status are on social media.

Brand Loyalty

Posting interesting and relatable content to your social media can help users identify with your brand and product. This allows you to convert an audience into loyal and committed followers. Social media gives you the chance to personalize your business and make connections with your followers. Building relationships is excellent customer service and creates trust. 

CONS: 

Time-consuming

One downside to social media marketing is how time consuming it can be. Interacting with each and every user can take quite a bit of time. Not to mention, you need to be constantly creating and posting content for your audience. It will take time to build your account and create a following for yourself. It’s important not to be discouraged when you don’t instantly get all the followers and interactions that other accounts may have

Risk of bad publicity

When it comes to the internet, people are not afraid to voice their opinions, good and bad. Social media users can promote your business as easily as they can slander it. It is not uncommon for people to post negative comments even when they have no idea what your company does. There is always the possibility of negative publicity going viral damaging the reputation of your business. This is why you need to manage your profiles and the content that is posted to them.

Security Concerns

There is always the possibility of hacking when you’re on social media. Hackers can break into a social media account and access valuable information, such as customers’ payment information or even your personal computer. However this is not super common, especially when taking proper security measures. 

I hope these tips help you decide whether or not social media marketing is right for your business! While you’re at it, go ahead and follow The Clever Site on all our socials. We’ll give you a follow as well, and as always, #BeClever!