By providing an easy access to their target audience, social networking is putting all entrepreneurs irrespective of their reach and size on the same pedestal.Irrespective of your business domain and the scale of operations, you cannot afford to overlook the ever-growing reach and power of social networking. Being in ‘Off’ mode in the online world is not a good sign, especially for budding businesses.
The crux of social media marketing channels can be defined as follows:
- It’s the new-age intermediary of sorts between organizations and audiences to initiate a conversation.
- Social media channels allow to build mutual trust and to forge a lasting relationship with them.
- Broadcasting specific messages to a wider mass market becomes easier with social media.
- It’s about holding a meaningful conversation with your target audience who is of interest and value to your brand.
The following remarks by Chris de Wolfe, the MySpace co-founder and chief executive, aptly sum up the social networking spirit: “The core of social networking is that the users decide what they want it to be: it’s all up to them.” Of course, the new-age communication channels can prove to be counterproductive, if you are injudicious and immature in handling interactions and information flow on it.
Take the two real-life cases to illustrate this point. After a major multi-national FMCG brand was portrayed guilty of environmental degradation in a graphic online video by an NGO, its Facebook page was flooded a spate of queries from concerned customers. The company though, chose to respond to them a seemingly unapologetic manner.
The official approach was something like: ‘Thanks for the lesson in manners. It’s our page, we set the rules.’ Initially upset with the video, the online community got further angry. This is because the company representative, who responded to customers, inadvertently violated the social media user behavior norms.
In another case, the Domino’s video on YouTube included snapshots of some employees carrying out ‘unappetizing’ things to the well-known chain’s food. This did not go well with the users, at all! In a matter of few days, the brand encountered a major PR crisis that it had a tough time dealing with!
It is very important, especially for smaller businesses to exploit the ability of these powerful online marketing channels in a constructive manner. However, the audience cannot be simply blanketed with brazen advertising attempts in order to reach out to them.
The aim should be to gauge their mindset and take appropriate follow-up action. It is important to sustain the users’ interest with fresh content, status updates and regular newsfeeds to tell them about anything of interest to them. Provided businesses do so, social media can be an efficient and engaging way of interaction.
