Many social media marketers are still holding onto a few dark secrets they don’t like to admit to, but here we bust them wide open.
Social media marketing isn’t free
One of the greatest advantages of social media marketing that many like to play up is the fact that it’s free. And, yes, it won’t cost you anything to claim social media profiles for your business, optimise them or post on a regular basis – at least not in money. The problem is that, even though you won’t necessarily have to spend money to fund your social media strategy, you will spend lots of time.
It takes hours of work to build out your business’ social media profiles, and several hours a week to even maintain the most basically active presence (on just one platform and typically 2 is a minimum to appeal to your target audience). Add up those hours and suddenly the amount of time that social media marketing does actually cost will become clear. After all, time is money!
No predictable pattern of success
No matter how sure people seem when telling you they hold the ‘secret’ for a business’ social media success, know that there’s no verifiable or consistent way to guarantee success for this task. For starters, every business is unique, with a unique target demographic, history and competitive landscape.
There’s no way any single strategy could possibly apply to everyone. Add in the fact that social media is always evolving and other random variables that could interfere with your results and the predictability of success decreases even more.
You need a lot of followers before social media pays off
The bottom line for social media, like any digital marketing strategy, is your total ROI. Over an extended period of time, it will be very good if you execute your social media strategy correctly, but your initial ROI will probably be terrible.
Imagine that it takes you 15 minutes to write a good post and you submit it to your 15 followers. Now, imagine you create the same post, but for 15,000 followers. Which one do you think will have a higher return for your investment? Honestly, it takes a long time for social media to pay off for your business.
Social platforms restrict your reach
Social media companies have a vested interest in getting you to pay for their advertising. As a result, they often restrict the amount of reach you’re able to get through organic or unpaid posts. Even though you have 500 followers, that doesn’t mean that every post you make is going to reach all 500 people. Keep this in mind when considering the sheer potential of social media – it’s probably far, far less than you think it is.
Data won’t tell you all
Another advantage social media has is its access to sheer volumes of data — you’ll be able to probe deeply into user behaviour, patterns of interaction and demographic information. But unfortunately, data can’t tell you all. It can’t give you qualitative insights about how individuals feel toward your brand or about specific interactions.
Data also can’t help you to generate new ideas you haven’t tried before. It can’t even give you actionable insights unless you’re asking the right questions of the data available in the first place.
Adapting is critical
Social media changes often, with new platforms cropping up seemingly constantly and new trends coming and going at an ever-increasing pace. If you want to be successful, you have to try to keep up, but keeping up is exhausting even for the most dedicated and switched on social media marketer.
It’s comforting to settle into a routine, but with social media, you’ll never get that opportunity – at least, you’ll never get to stay comfortable for long if you’re doing things right.
You’ll end up kicking yourself
There’s a lot of regret in the social media world, especially on a small business level. You’ll end up making typos or mistakes occasionally, but more often you’ll kick yourself for what you didn’t do. You might miss a good opportunity for a post, a hashtag or an engagement. You might see a competitor’s post and wish you’d thought of it first. In any case, your strategy won’t be perfect, and you’ll be all too aware of that fact.
Despite these ugly truths and seldom-mentioned secrets about the true nature of social media marketing, it remains one of the most cost-efficient and approachable online marketing strategies you can adopt. No matter what stage of growth your company is in, who your target market is and what your long-term goals are, social media can help – as long as you recognise its advantages and limitations and work with a social media marketing team prepared to be open and honest about the true state of affairs.
Contact the team at Website Design Centre to learn more.
