Social Media: 7 challenges your business must overcome

Social media was seen to be a passing fad by the business world but it proved to have a tremendous impact on business in the past decade. Social media platforms such as Instagram, twitter, Facebook and snapchat have changed everything we know about communication which has changed the way the businesses interact with their customers.

Social media has a deeper influence than just customer engagement. There are many different departments such as sales, human resources, product development and market research that are launching successful campaigns.

The internet is crying out with successful social media advertising, but there are still many social media challenges that we need to figure out. There is high competition on social media and it has become much more difficult for social media manager to get valuable return from social media services.

Here are some of the challenges faced by businesses on Social Media:

1. When you are looking to promote via social media, you are mostly focused on generating awareness and driving organic reach – this can be very tough especially in some verticals. A valuable and largely untapped asset is the employees. They are the easiest people to turn into brand advocates. A study conducted in 2013 found that respondents believed the employees are the most credible source of information regarding a business. The team needs to share the right information by educating on the company’s history, product and goals.

• Creating a social media strategy can be extremely challenging, firstly you need to know exactly what the strategy will be. The strategy is a summary of everything you plan to do and hope to achieve the business through the use of social networks. You should start by creating a list of social media objectives and goals. The more specific you are the more effective you will be at achieving it.

• It can be very discouraging when something you publish doesn’t perform as you would have expected it to, considering you put a lot of time and effort into your content. It can be explained by over saturation, 95 million photos and videos are uploaded to Instagram, over 500 million tweets are sent on twitter and more than 350 million photos are added to Facebook. To correct this you will need to find the right content mix for your audience.

• Social media is a great way to build awareness for your brand and attract new customers. You will need to think about what you need to do to retain them. There are many people that follow brands but a lot of people get annoyed with too many promotions. To increase brand loyalty you need to develop a rewarding humanistic relationship with your audience.

• People retain 10% of information that they hear but if it is paired with a relevant image then it jumps to 65%. You want your message to be remembered by people, visual content has been taken over many different social media platforms. Images increase the engagement of social media posts.

• Social media is a two way communication channel but most of the time it is a promotional mechanism. Marketers are using social networks as broadcasting outlets but answering messages will help engagement with customers.

• Social media is available to business of all shapes and sizes across industries. When you are incorporating social media into marketing strategies is complicated. The most important thing to do is familiarise yourself with the rules and regulations that apply to your industry.

Looking for social media services? Need help with social media marketing? We at Digital Carrera can help you build a social media strategy to stay on top of your competitors!