Social media is a powerful marketing tool to increase brand awareness and make a solid online presence.
Setting up a social media profile can also be very easy and convenient. However, many businesses still believe that simply using social media for online presence is not enough. Let’s examine several reasons why social media is just a small part of a larger business strategy.
Social media is only a social platform:
Most social media platforms – Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter- were mainly designed for socialising. People can come here, engage with others and share their thoughts and views. It was never meant to be a centre to conduct business.
Social media can only inform people about your products and services but cannot provide them with the detailed information that they need.
Social media owns your content:
You’re mistaken if you think the videos, images, or written content shared on any social media platform is yours. The content belongs to the social media online platform; they can use it for their benefit without your permission.
Alternatively, content published on copyrighted and protected websites is completely protected, and no one can sell or transfer that without your knowledge.
No guarantee for visibility on social media:
Social media cannot guarantee your ranking on Google, especially when there are around 3.5 billion daily searches. Facebook visibility mainly depends on the purchase of ad space, and if you stop buying ads, you will lose your position on social media.
On the other hand, optimising a dedicated website for Google will give you a long-lasting effect.
No support for ecommerce in social media:
A solid online presence needs you to operate 24/7 so customers can make purchases or submit their queries anytime. Social media may not support ecommerce as per customers’ expectations, and you may miss making money while you are asleep.
Social media is one section of online marketing, not the entire marketing strategy:
If you only rely on social media to grow your business, you can miss on other ways of improving traffic and boosting conversion rate.
No home base with social media presence:
Social media effectively connects with your customers, but if any customer wants to explore your product or brand, there is no home base on social media. Only a dedicated website can tell your customers about your vision, mission, and critical information about your product.
Optimising leads is not possible with social media:
Again, social media can allow your customers to reach you, but you can never convert your leads into sales. You can never convince people if you do not have a direct source of contact with them.
No additional analytics with social media platforms:
Almost all social media offer basic analytic features for all business accounts. However, the results and insights you get are not comparable to that of Google analytics.
Social media is not the only place for your audience:
While the youth, today, is present on almost all social media platforms, they still use several other platforms for online shopping, like ecommerce websites, Amazon, eBay, and even search engines.
Social media gives you a lower return on investment year after year:
Though most marketers use social media for promotion, they can only generate a little ROI. As the competition is becoming fierce, standing out is becoming more and more challenging. It would be best to look for other options, like referrals, email marketing, etc., for brand and product promotion.