Know The Pros And Cons of Social Media For Businesses

Before understanding the pros and cons of social media, especially for businesses, we need to know where social media comes from and what it is. Then, we can dive into how it benefits companies and the threats it brings to the online marketing landscape.

To start, social networks existed long before the internet. At the onset of digitally interconnecting, chats and instant messaging were a way to communicate what was going on with one’s life with one or many people for whom the group chose to include. Before that, school groups, clubs, and teams for kids were the way to share updates, photos, and life events. For adults, these interactions would (and still do) occur at clubs, church groups, and the workplace.

However, social networks have changed how information is shared, how the world communicates, and are a primary source of where people consume information. The social networks currently dominated by the number of users with a profile include Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, WeChat, LinkedIn, and X (formerly Twitter). These platforms are not just for connecting for personal reasons- they are vital for businesses.

So we’ve already named a few of the most used platforms, but here’s how to differentiate a social media platform from a messaging board or something like Google Cards. A social network is a way for people to connect online, largely for free. To use the networks, a user or business has to create a profile. The basic information on the profile varies by network, but most will ask for your name, email, location, main profile picture, and background image.

On these platforms, users can connect with others and share content such as text updates, images, emojis, videos, GIFs, and more. Each platform also has its niche, defined by who it appeals to, how much information can be shared, and what types of content are permitted.

So, with that in mind, here again is the list of social media platforms and some additional details about who they are or what they do:

• Facebook is the largest social network in the world, ideal for B2C marketing, group events, and community discussions. It is owned by Meta.
• Instagram is also owned by Meta. The content that does well includes visual storytelling, e-commerce integrations, and YMYL (your money, your life).
• LinkedIn was set up as a professional networking and B2B marketing platform for sharing resumes, whitepapers, certifications, degrees, and professional accomplishments.
• Twitter/X is for quick updates, endless customer service, and trending topics. Supports videos, images, and text.
• YouTube is the second most searched platform online. Great for videos of all kinds, including shorts, challenges, news, and more. Owned by Google.
• Pinterest is a platform for sharing images, especially popular for eCommerce, DIY, and discovering artwork, including paintings and professional photography.
• WhatsApp is also owned by Meta. A platform for making app-to-app phone calls. Also great for sharing images, video calls, and documents.

Pioneered by now-defunct sites like MySpace,  these platforms were initially created for connecting personally with people and creating friend circles and even ranking who your best friend is. Since then, they’ve evolved into amazing marketing ecosystems that businesses can use to reach new customers, connect with current clients, and grow brand loyalty.

With a basic understanding of what social media networks are and which ones are the most popular worldwide, we’re going to go through eleven reasons why social media marketing is great for businesses. Granted, there isn’t a specific “secret method” that guarantees success; this list will show the power of online networking sites:

Social platforms allow a business to reach millions of people, build recognition, and help people become familiar with your company. If done organically, there is no cost for communicating with those you are friends with. If not, paid social media ads are cheaper than most traditional methods.

With how easy it is for businesses and customers to connect, the customers expect direct, instant interaction—social networks provide a real-time communication channel. It is a faster way to get a response from a company other than calling or even sometimes sending an email. However, with how networks are set up, good interactions can be shared easily with many people.

Before, legacy media would be the only way that consumers could learn about what a company is or does. If a scandal broke, businesses were at the mercy of which major network or publisher would air what the businesses wanted to say. Now, owners can engage with their audiences personally. To take it to the next level, both businesses and owners can have a profile on social networks.

When a customer needs information, they can message the company, the owner, and any company employees to understand any news release, dispel rumors, and confirm sales. This type of interaction helps foster loyalty and humanize the brand.

This, right here, is a big bonus. Gone are the days when you hope people will see information that has been posted on your website. Sure, there are email blasts that can address a featured blog, newsletters mentioning an update, but those aren’t the only ways to spread the word. Social media networks are wonderful for sharing blog posts, promotions, and new products or services.

When this information is shared with a link to the company’s website, the overall traffic to the website increases. Websites are the digital equivalent of a brick-and-mortar store. The more time in the store or on the website, the more likely a customer consume more information, fill out a contact form, sign up for a newsletter, or make additional purchases.

For digital marketers or agencies helping with the digital marketing of a company, the information generated from those social media visitors to the site will show what information customers want. If a social media post about product “A” gets no traction, but product “B” brings in a ton more visitors, the company has its answer as to which product to push and which to put on the sidelines for now.

Customer segmentation, audience segmentation, target groups, geographical targeting, and more are easy to do. With advanced targeting options, businesses can narrow down campaigns by zip code, if they visited the company website before, what language they speak, people who have looked at products or services similar to your offering, and much more.

First, we have to say that social media signals, links, and images are not ranking factors for search engines like Google. Because they’re considered open sources, the information in there usually has to be taken with a grain of salt. That being said, content that performs well on social media often gets more backlinks and mentions.

Also, social networks are a way for companies to get visual information to appear on search results as well. If a customer were to search for your product and click on “images” on a search engine, your social media image can appear there. While website images usually do take precedence, social images still can rank.

As proof in point, at the time of initial writing of this blog, the sixth image on Google’s image search for “bilingual digital marketing” is an image from a company’s post on Instagram. For an image search for “agencia de marketing bilingue”, images from Instagram are in the third, sixth, eighth, and tenth places.

In contrast to the opportunity to target specific audiences proactively, as discussed before, analytical and customer information can help owners shape their next marketing strategy. It is a common fallacy for executives to think they know who their ideal customer is instead of focusing on who their customers are. With this disconnect, it’s easy for marketing budgets to be exhausted and yield miraculous results.

With the ability to add UTMs and other tracking capabilities, businesses are able to see who is coming to the website. With this valuable insight, companies can view demographics like age, gender, location, and interests. The new information can then be compared to who the company is targeting to ensure they’re targeting the right people, or perhaps create a new customer segmentation and adjust marketing.

Aside from alignment, companies can test new products this way, too. Instead of lengthy prospecting, sending samples, or buying research, a company can simply put up a survey on any of their social accounts and ask their clients directly which option they’d like. Quick, easy, and painless.

If brands are wondering what their customers think of them, post a question on social media, although the brand should ensure that the question elicits the types of answers they would want to receive. For instance, open-ended questions can provide a lot of different responses, especially in length. Yes or no questions are easier to quantify.

Also, social media is a great way to just ask your customers questions. Don’t be afraid to ask what products or services they want, which is their favorite, what they want your brand to do differently, which non-profit sponsorships they’d want the brand to do, and so on.

For ads, companies can post variations of the ads, videos, and promotional products, and ask their followers which one resonates with them the best and why. Unlike official surveyors or more formal events, followers online are more willing to respond, share, and give unbiased opinions.

If your company has an idea that is genius, out of the box, and the best thing since sliced bread, posting it on social media is perhaps the fastest way to have that information shared with the most people. There isn’t a magic formula for creating posts that will go viral, but it is worth the endeavor.

Other ways that companies can get in front of millions of people easily are paid ads, like in the Super Bowl or the World Cup, where just a few seconds of exposure costs millions of dollars. However, when a few influencers or people with many followers like something that a brand has created, they will share it on their page, and it will spread quickly.

So, with all of the advantages of social media networks above, why would any brand not want to jump in head first and use them all the time? Well, not everything is rainbows and unicorns. As much as we would like them to be, there are disadvantages when not utilized correctly. While the potential is huge, businesses must navigate real challenges. Here are 11 disadvantages to consider:

With many different platforms to choose from, there also come many different formats. The text limit on one is different from the others. The size of the image that brands can use to maximize their space on social networks takes time, even with software that will “automatically” resize it. Slight variations in the image size can completely change the look and feel.

Second, if a brand interacts frequently with its clients who are quick to respond, it can be extremely difficult to keep up. With all the direct messages, mentions, tags, reposts, and so on, a mid-size business can easily spend hours and hours a day just on social media.

It is human nature not to say anything when things go well. However, it’s also human nature to complain and vent when things aren’t going perfectly. Before the internet, unless a product or service was so bad that legal action was taken, a person could only tell so many friends and co-workers about their dissatisfaction.

Now, with social media networks being essentially open to everyone and free, it gives unhappy customers a big microphone on the internet to complain. Most social media platforms allow for most forms of free speech, depending on the country in which the content is viewed. However, if a user complains and the information isn’t derogatory or defamatory, they can post almost anything they want

Also, the ability to tag businesses on social platforms makes it easy for readers and those interested in a story to go right to the business’s profile and potentially spam the message inbox, making it difficult to deal with the quantity of messages, but also weed through the noise to find those comments that need a response.

Just as one post can make a business go viral in a good way, a poorly timed post or a misunderstood comment can go viral for all the wrong reasons. Due to the many external forces of a business that are not controllable, sometimes posts do more harm than good. As an example, outside of social media, when 9/11 occurred, American citizens were sensitive when it came to the topic of aviation or traveling.

Now, imagine a private aviation company that spent a lot of time and effort planning to advertise, put up a social media post about leaving New York to go to a better place. It’s not hard to see how that one post from a well-meaning marketer could be taken completely out of context, vilify them in the court of public opinion, and the brand suffers.

Hackers and dishonest internet thieves continuously try to take advantage of hard-working and honest people.  With so many different login credentials for multiple online platforms that most employees use daily, it comes as no surprise that about 78% of people use the same password for more than one system online.

Hackers and spammers try to trick employees, business owners, and those affiliated with companies into getting their usernames and passwords. This can be done via fake emails pretending to be social media networks, fake ads on the networks themselves, or even call centers from other countries scamming people to get their logins over the phone.

To take it a step further, those who have a vendetta against a company often do create fake social media accounts, pretend they’re the company they dislike, and smear the company’s reputation online. Of course, this is illegal and punishable in many countries; some people take the risk, and the brand suffers possible irrevocable damage.

Third, political and ownership changes can either give a business’s profile a big boost or come to an abrupt end. As an example, Elon Musk took over Twitter and fired the majority of the workers there while relaxing the censorship of content on the platform. Because of political affiliations, brands had to decide whether to stay on the platform or leave.

Even if an organization is the best, has perfect reviews, and benefits society, not all its customers want to hear about it constantly. After all, social media is about connecting on a more personal level with people and companies, not a platform for one brand on which to dominate.

Also, given how accessible these platforms are, an industry can easily become overrepresented. With so many companies, individuals, and organizations competing for users’ attention, there’s a limit to how many ads people want to see before leaving the platform.

Just like any other well-kept secret, they never stay secret for long. As to our last point above, the more businesses in the same industry sign up for these social media networks, the more expensive advertising becomes. While ads can be cheap at first, competition drives prices up, especially in saturated industries.

Despite what influencers or social media personalities will tell you, platform users don’t own their followers. A great company could build its entire brand on one social media network, amass many loyal customers, invest most of its time, marketing, and funds into succeeding on that one platform to be kicked off with no warning.

There are many stories of this happening, especially to Instagram personalities, whose entire revenue stream is immediately cut off. Just like any smart investor, businesses need to diversify their portfolio and not depend on just one platform or just social media as a whole.

Employees accidentally using their employer’s social media platform instead of their own has become so mainstream that TV series have mentioned it in their programs, like the character Donna in Parks and Rec. However, just because it has happened enough that people can joke about it, having it happen in real life can be devastating.

Building trust and followers takes a long time and a lot of hard work. However, one offensive tweet, post, or comment can have all of that hard work come crashing down. Even if the information posted isn’t illegal, hot topics like politics can alienate an entire client segment, even if the views accidentally posted were not the official view of the company.

Proofreading is another human error that turns an entire conversation upside down. A widely known fact is that an argument between two people online can come crashing down if one side has a spelling error.  Regardless of what the discussion is about or who was technically right, a misspelling can bring out trolling and unfavorable attention.

So, would it be better not to bother with social media in the first place, even if there are potential benefits? In today’s marketing world, it’s almost a must to be on at least two social media platforms for a business. So, if social networking is necessary, each brand has to figure out the right balance of engagement and posting. However, there does come a point where it becomes advantageous to hire a social media marketing agency to help.

Here is a short list of things to review if thinking of outsourcing your social media marketing. You can download a PDF version here.

Does your company currently:

• Lack time or bandwidth?
• Have a plan that isn’t working?
• Lack expert social media knowledge?
• Think results are taking too long?
• Only use standard platform tools?
• Have branding and messaging that are inconsistent?
• Only have basic reporting or performance tracking?
• Struggle to track competitors and trends?
• Lack funds to hire an in-house employee due to long-term costs?
• Struggle to create appealing imagery for ads in English and Spanish?

If you answered yes to any of the items on the list above, you need to consider talking to a social media marketing agency.

Remember: The cost of “trial and error” marketing can far exceed the investment in experts.

If you answered any of those questions above and see the need to hire a social media marketing agency to help you, we’ve got you covered. The way we overcome the cons and maximize the pros of social media is through:

• Customized Strategies: We don’t do the same for every client. Each plan is built around individual brands and goals.
• Full-Service Management: We help manage current plans to manage your total social media presence. Doesn’t matter if you’ve been running your accounts for years or never. We’ve got you.
• Bilingual Marketing Expertise: Just like content needs to be in each language you want to attract, the same is true with social media posts. The text posts and images need to attract attention to the niche of people you want to attract.
• SEO and PPC Integration: If you want a cohesive approach to your branding and online messaging, we can help amplify your reach beyond social media.
• Content Management: Build a unified message and brand online. No matter if clients see your brand information on social media, your website, or on ads, we keep the message and branding sound like they’re from the same company.

Social networks are powerful tools for businesses, offering both great opportunities and notable risks. Success lies in strategic planning, constant monitoring, and professional execution. If you’re serious about leveraging social media to grow your business, hiring a digital marketing agency is one of the smartest moves you can make.

We’ve helped businesses increase engagement by over 300%, drive thousands of targeted visitors monthly, and turn social media into a true revenue channel. Ready to have STRONG, BRIGHT Social Media Marketing? Contact us today for a free consultation or social media audit.