The pros and cons of social media

With the country in lockdown, many firms have lost vital communication channels as they can no longer visit clients or attend business-related functions. As a result, many are now using social media to keep in contact. But what are the pros and cons of social media?

The Pros

1. Social media can be a very cheap and effective way of reaching out to a wider audience who you can’t connect with via email, mailings or personal connections.
2. It helps keep you engaged with your clients and business contacts.
3. Where staff are working from home it can help them feel connected with the business and their colleagues and make them feel less isolated.
4. It can help portray the ‘personal’ side of the firm, not just a corporate image.
5. It will help raise and maintain your profile.
6. Social media can be a great way of starting a conversation which can then lead to further discussions by email, phone or video conference call (and in time face to face meetings!).
7. It can be a useful source of generating new enquiries and signing up new clients.
8. It’s a great way to show your CSR initiatives.
9. Many firms have found it beneficial for staff recruitment, not just for advertising vacancies, but also to demonstrate the culture of the firm and how you interact with others, which can help to attract like-minded individuals.

The Cons

1. For your social media to be effective it requires regular input, otherwise you will lose momentum.
2. You can receive negative comments, but it also gives you the opportunity to put things right. Sometimes this is achieved without you having to get involved but by others jumping in posting positive comments about you. It can also show others how proactive you are in handling negative feedback.
3. We can get lost in social media overload which creates too much ‘white noise’ and causes people to keep scrolling down the page and not stopping to read your posts. You need to make your content interesting, engaging and different so that it stands out from other posts and gets people engaging with you.
4. Social media shouldn’t be your only channel for communication, it should be part of your wider marketing and communications toolbox.
5. Paid for social media advertising, such as ‘post boosts’ can be expensive if they are not targeted to the right audience and if your message is not eye-catching.

The COVID-19 situation means that many firms will now be doing more social media posts than they have done in the past. However, you may want to consider how much social media posting is currently being done and whether it will be feasible to keep posting to the same extent once we’re ‘back to normal’.

The above article focuses on the pros and cons of social media. For further tips on perfecting your social media posts, read our blog called ‘The Principles of Social Media’.

If we can help with your social media, please contact me on vicki@momentumforprofessionals.co.uk. Or call 01822 833300 to discuss your requirements in more detail.