Thinking of using social media to boost your company’s exposure? You may want to think twice and plan carefully before leaping forward.
Companies end up losing as much as $4.3 million in sales globally due to social media mistakes.
A social media crisis is possible to avoid and prevent with a proper social media strategy. With a dedicated social media manager, you can gain the benefits of business growth while avoiding these kinds of blunders.
The following details are tips on why you should hire a social media manager and how they can help you prevent a social media mistake.
1. Building Brand Recognition
A reason why you should have a dedicated social media manager for your company is that they can help you in building up your brand. Customers using the brand for both its quality and established relationship can forge brand loyalty the more they partake of your product or service.
With a social media manager, you can have new customers drawn in while you maintain brand loyalty for long-time consumers. You can also have a means to gauge how satisfied your customers are with it, and their feedback on how you can improve.
Social media managers make it a point that the brand gets recognized through all possible platforms, and have them promoted by influencers (personalities known through social media).
2. Social Media is Not Only Numbers
One thing that you should know is that in order to avoid any social media crisis, remember that the social media is not merely numbers. It is a wide network of individuals and personalities that continually interact.
A social media manager can help engage potential consumers and maintain an open communication with them. With certain trends and issues continually changing as time goes by. As it goes with advertising and marketing, you can use these trends to draw in more customers.
However, that is not the only thing that you should be aware of. There are other issues and trends that may require you to tread lightly, as it can be a disaster waiting to happen. A wrong move or a faux pas can cause disastrous results, resulting in the loss of customers.
There are various situations where this occurred, causing outrage from various people, which we will note in full detail later on.
3. Increased Traffic
This already includes the right optimization for your website. Making use of trends, or even starting one with a creative content strategy, can even make your product viral.
Social media has an interesting way of making things popular through the Internet. Being present in all possible social media platforms, and endorsed by influencers. Various brands recognized in new ways. This form of engagement increases traffic towards your site.
4. Familiarity with Metrics and Other Statistics
Another thing to note that aside from increased traffic, hiring a social media manager can ensure that you have a means to interpret statistics and metrics on your site. This includes insights, which hold the number of views, shares, likes, and retweets.
These metrics can tell you the number of people engaged. Without a social media manager, this can be hard to work with unless you have experience in handling the website. You might even end up groping in the dark. The advantage of having one is that you have a means to interpret the data and make use of them for your next social media campaign.
5. Having an Edge over the Competition
There are businesses that have no idea how to make use of social media. This can prove as an edge for you as you can reach out to more people. Though, this also becomes apparent that there are others possibly in the same business also making use of social media.
In this case, having a social media manager can ensure that you know how to prepare for such instances. Knowing what your competitors are going for can give you an edge in standing out and offering something better.
Not having a social media manager can prove difficult as you end up being overtaken by the competition. With a social media manager, you can work together to build up your online presence.
Do note that this presence also includes a good reputation as this draws in more people. A negative impression and publicity would do more harm to your company than good.
6. Having Someone Curating Content for Your Business
A social media manager has to be as dedicated as you, especially when it comes to curating content for your website. This means creating fresh content regularly to engage customers, ensuring that it gets circulated through various social media channels, and maintaining communication with customers.
This kind of work requires focus and dedication. Not having a dedicated team may cause your online presence to suffer, leaving you far behind with the competition. With a social media management team, you can also come up with social media campaigns that will wow your customers.
Social media management agencies are capable of coming up with ideas that you can bounce off with, helping you come up with interesting concepts that you can run. They also ensure that they are at their best edge when looking for trends that they can utilize for promoting your business.
7. Saves Cost and Draws Income
One more reason why you should get a social media manager is that it allows you to gain access to the capabilities of a whole team for the price of one. This also becomes an investment as they continue to ensure that they are at the top of their game with the trends and techniques they use.
Examples of PR Blunders You Can Avoid!
There are certain scenarios and cases where you can avoid getting caught in a PR blunder. Avoiding them and preventing social media crisis would be tantamount. Have your PR team, and your social media manager know how to avoid this.
Here are some examples.
1. Pepsi PR Crisis
This Pepsi ad involving Kendall Jenner was one that would have been easily avoided if the PR team had looked deeper into the current issues with utter clarity. Volatile issues like the current ones shown in the news with the Women’s March, Black Lives Matter, and other things are rather sensitive. What should have been a Pepsi PR genius became a Pepsi PR blunder.
What also caused the internet to come together in outrage was Kendall Jenner’s involvement and how it was badly executed. Also, it conveyed a message that was rather contrary to the intent that Pepsi was trying to put across. It went from uniting the generation into “if I hand the officer a can of Pepsi while the rally goes on, I won’t get arrested.”
Within 48 hours, the internet raged on and the video had more downvotes on YouTube. An advice to this is to make sure the message conveyed does not give off any double meanings. It also helps that you take note of possible repercussions to the whole idea.
As of this day, not even Pepsi would choose to defend the commercial, choosing to apologize for the advertising faux pas.
2. Cinnabon Princess Leia Tweet Mishap
Another one to look at as an example is this tweet from Cinnabon after the death of the late Carrie Fisher, known for her role in Star Wars as Princess Leia. Cinnabon posted this tweet with a form of a sketch depicting Princess Leia while promoting one of their signature pastries.
Of course, several people rose up to the occasion as they called out the move as being disrespectful and rather tasteless. Within a few hours after the tweet, Cinnabon issued an apology. The original tweet was then deleted soon after. In the time between, the denouncement over the issue was swift and sharp.
There are lessons to pick up from this particular mishap. One is to not ride on a renowned personality’s tragedy or death. While the intent was to sympathize, it may backfire and cause a huge backlash that can cost both reputation and possible losses in income.
3. Kenneth Cole’s Twitter Blunder
One more to note is this tweet from Kenneth Cole that also had a rather insensitive joke about the revolution in Egypt. While humor can be a great tool in marketing, discretion is best observed. As you would note with this situation, there is a thin line between jokes and insults, this being evident with the reactions on Cole’s statement.
The tweet was since then deleted and Cole apologized. During the time between, he and his brand got lambasted by the Internet.
Avoid These Blunders by Hiring a Social Media Manager Today!
While the adage “bad publicity is still publicity” may be true as how your business becomes known to many people, it does more harm than good due to the ill reputation that you carry. This doesn’t help you in growing your business, which shows that it still pays to have a good reputation.
To avoid a social media crisis, consider hiring a social media manager to spread the good word about your business and the quality of both your products, services, and customer service.
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