The Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing

In my last blog, I discussed about how companies are using social media for marketing and how social media are changing the business world. As we known, any coin has two sides. There is no doubt that social media marketing has a lot of advantages that traditional media marketing may not have. However, social media marketing also has some disadvantages which could result in a devastating blow on business. So what are the advantages of social media marketing? The answer to this question could also explain why social media is so important for companies’ business strategies. Meanwhile, what are the disadvantages of social media marketing that companies may neglect? Here I would like to share my opinion on the main pros and cons of social media marketing:  

The Pros of Social Media Marketing

Brand Awareness – As you create your own account on social media platform, which has an enormous number of users in the network, more people will recognize your company name, logo, products, the link to your website and other information related to your company. Therefore, you establish more brand awareness among your tremendous potential client base.

Building Community – Unlike traditional media, such as newspaper and TV, social media has network effect, which would benefit the company significantly. Social media platform offers a unique opportunity for the company to participate in discussion, answer questions and provide customer services at any time of the day. This keep the user engaged and build an exclusive community for you and your customer day by day.

Cost Effectiveness – This is the main advantage of social media marketing. Most of social media sites are free to access, join and post information. Those who are interested in your company could easily follow you by a click. This means you could reach your target market without spending lots of money. As we known, in the business world, cash is a critical asset for companies to run their businesses. By using social media marketing, there is nearly no cash investment and companies could use those cash to invest in other area, such as R&D.

Market Research – People called the 21^st century is the information era, where information maters a lot for business. Companies could benefit from social media for market research in two respects. First, companies are able to access competitor’s presence in social media and know their business strategies, especially marketing strategies. Therefore, they could adjust their strategies and maximize their competitive advantages. Second, it is easy for company to track customers’ behavior through social media. Companies are able to know customers’ preference and evaluation about their products and services by analyzing their comments. With the powerful social media, companies would save a lot on market research since they don’t need to pay for the information. 

The Cons of Social Media Marketing

Time Consuming – From my personal experience, getting involved with social media is really time-consuming. So you can imagine that how much time and work a company should commit to. Usually, a senior people with knowledge about the company and products should take in charge of the social media presence. Customers may ask tons of questions on your Facebook page and these questions could probably be a social concern about your company. As a responsible company, you need to answer them quickly and appropriately. Otherwise, customers may leave your page and even leave your products or services. This is one of the reasons why few small companies choose to have social media presence since social media platform is easy to create but it is hard to maintain. So, the cost in time means that social media for marketing is not completely free.

Hidden Risk – Social media carries some hidden risk that potentially could ruin a company’s reputation and therefore their business. As we know, all the comments of your customers and employees are public and everyone is accessible to them. If someone posts a breaking bad news or comment, before the company even don’t recognize, the news could spread to millions of people in a very short period of time. As the good news can benefit your company, bad news can go viral as easily as good news and can do your business irreparable harm. For example, imagine that one employee of food company post a status on the company’s page saying “People add some unknown chemicals to the product of my company in order to make it more colorful”. Even this new may not be true, but since it is released by the employee, people may share this news crazily and it could ruin the reputation of the company. 

As a Chinese saying goes, anything could be a double-edged sword. Social media marketing is not an exception. It has its own advantage over traditional media, such a bigger user base. In the same time, it could also ruin a company in a short time by just a piece of news. Overall, the advantages of social media marketing weigh more than disadvantage. If a company devotes time and effort on social media marketing, its payoff could be far beyond your expectation.