Social media marketing is an unavoidable aspect of marketing in the contemporary era. Nearly every company is trying to connect with its existing and prospective customers via social media tools, trying to engage them, seeking their opinion or feedbacks along with promoting its brand. However, social media marketing can also be the undoing of companies who cannot handle this aspect of interacting with social media users. This fact has been proven by many controversies that engaged headlines across the world and underlined that the social media arena is not meant for the underprepared.
For instance, The Australian airline giant, Qantas, went on a social media overdrive when its workers were protesting via a strike. During their Twitter-based efforts, the brand even offered free holidays to the competition winners. However, rather than being overwhelmed with an increasing number of enthusiastic participants, Qantas’ Twitter handle was flooded with messages that underlined utter disdain among its customers.
A digital strategy that includes social media might seem more affordable and less technical but indulging in promotional activities without thinking about the possible outcomes can have such disastrous results. Further, the obsession of hiring younger employees for social media marketing doesn’t make much sense. Age doesn’t seem to make anybody a better social media analyst or marketer.
The fault doesn’t lie with the liberal working of social media but the lack of clarity and foresight in those who are trying to communicate a brand’s message. Making a social media campaign people-centric and helping it engage positive interaction also needs some degree of planning, adept handling and crisis management. Basically, it needs to be handled in conformity with the benchmarks set for any other type of advertising campaign.
In fact, social media marketing needs more management since this niche is still being explored. There are no set benchmarks and the trends seem to change every week. The liberty of expression on social media means that a brand can be clobbered to its nemesis if its communicative strategy on social media mediums is flawed.
The other issue with social media promotion lies in the inability of popular social media forums, including Twitter, to curb falsely-pumped opinions that are an attempt to bad-mouth a brand. There have been complaints about guests who have threatened some hotels with horrible reviews on popular travel sites like TripAdvisor unless they weren’t promised freebies or better services.
However, TripAdvisor doesn’t seem to cross-check and remove such manufactured, negative reviews. In fact, users can easily forge their names and present highly damaging reviews about new or emerging businesses that are more vulnerable to such negativity.
In conclusion, taking social media marketing for granted because of its casual layout could be the undoing of any organization unless a clear perspective and planned approach are adopted.
Source: The Telegraph
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