Should your startup forgo social media?
Since British pub chain J D Wetherspoon announced its renouncement of social media, marketing gurus have been quick to talk about the future of social media as part of marketing strategies. While there are pros and cons to both staying and leaving, we will help you make a more informed decision by presenting cases for both scenarios.
Data suggests social media has had its 15 minutes of fame. As quickly as it arose, it is seeing steady signs of decline; especially since it is facing stiff challenges in light of privacy and data concerns. 40 per cent of people claim to have deleted their social media profiles citing trust issues over personal information use.
Social media’s power comes from its user base, which is primarily responsible for its reach and influence. However, there are some interesting statistics that show it is slowly turning into a ghost of castles made of fake and unused profiles.
Studies show that the number of new users on Facebook as well as Instagram have been declining over the years, as is the engagement. Younger teens are increasingly ditching social media to stay away from online bullying potential, addiction and mental sanity.
Yet, social media is one of the first marketing initiatives of almost every brand and startup. It is time to question this and re-evaluate your marketing strategy. We present the following cases:
Team Quits
Marketing spends a big chunk of its budget on social media managers, designers, video editors and more. These can then be saved and used to provide more value to customers, redistributed to improving products, or even marketing initiatives are could reach the audience more effectively.
Founders are saved from potential legal problems that can arise from non-compliance to the tightening General Data Protection Regulation across the world.
The publicity that comes from offline initiatives which replace social media campaigns.
If you’re a B2C lifestyle brand, you could lose out on brand recall as well as the potential to build a community through social platforms. However, if you deploy marketing initiatives to attract and give value to customers on a regular basis, people will remember you.
Depending on your target audience, social media may not be the best strategy to reach your customers. If you’re a tech, legal or financial firm, or any other B2B company, your interests do not match the content that is in line with the platforms’ algorithms. The content that does well is often in lifestyle sectors, such as food, home decor, design, fashion, animals, and such, especially from thought leaders and value content providers.
Page likes and follows are declining in value, which is a clear aspect of the medium not being as popular as it used to be.
You could still benefit from social media platforms without actually being on social media. Making your customers who use social platforms aware of hashtags you’d like them to use, could help you track your brand image. Moreover, your profile is just one of the many who can publish images or videos about you. It is a smarter strategy to let content work for you, which wouldn’t cost you a dime.
Team Stays
It hardly costs anything to set up a social media profile. However, social media managers and their design teams can quickly rack up bills, taking a major portion of your marketing budget.
It is an easy platform to build a loyal and interested community around your brand.
For big brands, it has become almost a necessity to keep social channels on, as they provide better customer experiences when they want to get in touch with you quickly and easily. There are now dedicated customer service personnel assigned to receive and resolve complaints through social media.
Social channels are often the first place people search for more information about products or brands.
By having a profile, you have a voice on the platform, which can come in handy when making announcements and spreading news. For example, if people know there is a market every Saturday, and on a certain Saturday you don’t put it up, you can quickly announce the news through social platforms and not have to deal with angry customers.
They are very effective in driving promotions.
The ultimate purpose of marketing is to build emotional connections with an audience so as to benefit the business in its long and short-term goals. So the question founders need to ask themselves is whether they can do this in ways other than social media. For Wetherspoons, the answer was yes, they can provide services at their physical premises and build relations with their audience.
Consider how much social media is eating up of your business budget, and evaluate whether other channels have a better chance to provide valuable experiences to your audience. Social media usage, reports show, is on the decline, with people only staying due to the fear of missing out. Even then there is a middle ground that can be achieved by redefining the purpose of social media for your company. You may not need to give it up entirely, yet be able to save expenses while gaining the pros of what the platforms have to offer.
