6 Big Myths about Social Media Marketing

Social media has become the buzz word of today that has billions of Facebook users, Millions of Twitter followers and other users of different social media platforms. In other words, social media has become the largest marketing platforms for organizations where they can promote their products or services at larger scale. Looking at such a huge number of social media users, marketing managers accept this fact that social media is the best place to advertise and showcase their products because it reaches to maximum audience across the globe. Well, this is true that social media has no boundaries and allow brands to travel in every region via laptops, desktops or smart gadgets. But, things always not as good as they appear; so here I am going to discuss few myths regarding social media that has deluded the minds.

Social Media is Free

It is a common belief of people that social media is free and involves no marketing cost. But the cost is not always counts in monetary terms, time cost is important too. Social media needs dedicated time and effort for posting, sharing and interacting. If you think that posting and generating content at your social platforms is free, you are mistaken. You have to work by spending your time in writing content, selecting relevant pictures to post and etc. if you want to engage your audience over social media, you must have to do time investment which is a regular activity.

It Works

You have heard from your colleagues, friends or from family members that social media always deliver results in your favor. You post, share, tag and interact with your target market and they will start purchasing the product you are selling. Well, this is not like that. You can’t become a top notch name of the social media world over the night. You must have to generate a relevant and impactful content that is interesting to your target market. Having dozens of likes and followers does not mean that you are going to earn millions from social media. You have to put efforts, time and possibly money to get desired results.

It’s Easy to Manage

You think that just by posting, sharing and generating content to your social media sites is the guarantee of your success. But the first thing to understand here is that, generating a meaningful content is not as easy as you think. Your audience will respond to your posts only when they find it interesting and relevant to their interest. So, you have to do research on your target market in order to analyze their interests and preferences. For this, you should check your expertise that, do you have the skill to write something compelling? If not, then it is a problem. Remember that quality content is the key to unlock your customer’s mind for your brand. Write, post, and reinforce your content until your brand gets a specific position in consumer’s mind.

Social Engagement Results In Brand Loyalty

This is once again a common belief that once you succeed in actively engaging your audience on social media, you can earn a brand loyalty. Well, this is hard to believe that you can engage your customer with your brand just by doing social media activities. It demands much more such as, your brand positioning, product performance, quality and satisfaction level. You can’t earn the trust of customers just by performing a few social media activities. For this, you have to go beyond this typical misconception regarding social media and must work on your actual brand along with social media.

Present In All Social Media Channels

People usually believe that making your business visible in all social media channels is important and to execute this, they make account on every channel. Well this is not the case, It is not important to appear all the platforms. If you want to be successful on social media, you should understand the importance of choosing a right social media channel which is suited to your business. You should keep in mind that social media needs time and efforts, so you should spend your time in the most required channel that has expanded demographics.

It Cannot Be Measured

This is another common belief of people that Social Media is not measurable like other marketing tools such as sales promotion or advertising. This is quite quiet wrong, you can track the content, visitors, new leads, special campaign and etc. You may not measure it in monetary terms but you can measure it to analyze how many visitors are converting into leads that directly contribute into your sales. You should set criteria for your social media marketing campaign, which is track able and can be converted into something meaningful. For example, if you are running a social media campaign with the objective in mind to increase brand awareness, you should set criteria for it such as number of visitors, any increase in the number of customers, the extent to which people know your brand name or etc.

Now, as a vigilant marketer, you should understand that likes or followers are not your guaranteed loyal customers. They may be just browsing like every person arriving in the brick and mortar store is not a buyer. You have to work to convince your target market by performing social media activities plus traditional marketing techniques. You need to identify the problems your market is facing, so you can give them a better solution. For this purpose, you can use social media to conduct a research on your potential market, analyze the result of it, plan a comprehensive strategy and come up with a complete solution. If you have observed any other myth regarding social media, do share with us to add value in this regard.

Fiona Allen is content writer and designing consultant at 5Stardesigners. She likes to write about digital marketing, logo designing and internet marketing. 5stardesigners is Logo Design Company and seeks to provide branding solution for small/medium enterprises.