Be Warned of the Cons of Social Media Marketing

In our last post we put a compiled list of the pros of SMM to enable you to reach your objective for online marketing. In this post we cover the cons. We believe (and hope you do too) that knowing the cons will reduce the number of mistakes you are going to make!

Cons:

• Information on the social web moves fast, but often at the expense of deeper personal relationships. Marketers, while they can reach customers in new ways and get feedback from them faster than ever before, still aren't personalizing communications and engagement to the benefit of customers and the organization.
• A fan or a follower isn't a business objective. Social media has enabled marketers to chase metrics that don't impact their business. Do we really NEED social marketing to attract prospective clients?
• It is very time consuming. There are so many social network sites to be involved, interactions to make, relationships to build, tasks to get done, content to write almost on a daily basis. Realistically, this isn't really what you need to do in a day.
• Viral Negative Publicity. The viral nature of social networking can be both on the positive and negative side. Negative publicity spreads faster in social media these days than in traditional media.
• Reduced content = reduced traffic. In social marketing, the value that you provide through content really does matter a lot. Once you begin to be inconsistent in this area, you will see a decline in the number of your audience and number of visits to your blog.
• You lose some control of your marketing efforts. Anything you publish is up for grabs, and others can easily criticize you.
• Social media marketing places high demands on your talent. It can be difficult to constantly come up with innovative exciting content that interests a variety of readers and, without relevance your efforts will be wasted.
• Social media is a long haul strategy. It could be months, or even years, before you start seeing it translating into increased customer loyalty and sales.