Social media is a straightforward and tricky marketing channel at the same time. 

On one side, SMM platforms are great for keeping in touch with your target audience, sharing interesting content, analyzing trends, and launching perfectly targeted ads. 

On the other hand, social networks make businesses more vulnerable since the public’s response to a particular strategy is not always predictable. 

Should you use social media for your business today? A quick spoiler: Yes. 

The benefits outweigh the disadvantages. But let’s analyze the pros and cons of social media for a business to make a clear decision.

7 Benefits Of Social Media For Business

Let’s start with an overview of the main advantages of social networking and social media marketing for brands.

1. Get in touch with target users

So, one of the most obvious benefits of social media for business is that you can reach and stay connected to your target audience 24/7. What is more, half of the world’s population are active users of social networks, so the sky’s the limit in this case.

All you need to do is choose the right social media site and strategy, set up your advertising company properly, and start attracting users from almost every corner of the planet at the right time.

Keep in mind that certain social networks are actually banned in some countries. You need to take this into account when developing your strategy. For example, here is a list of countries where Facebook is banned.

To cover the maximum audience possible, you also need to know the best time to post. Choosing the best time to post on Instagram and other platforms will help you achieve the maximum reach and ensure you’re answering all customer queries timely.

2. Use flexible ad opportunities

In those locations where Facebook is allowed, this social network as well as other platforms (Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest) give you very, very flexible options for setting up the most targeted advertising campaigns. It has never been so easy to come up with accurate buyer personas and instantly show them your product or service. 

SMM advertising settings allow you to target users based on their gender, age, education, profession, family status, lifestyle, online behavior, interest in competing goods, and many other parameters. 

What’s more, this type of advertising is much more affordable than traditional Google ads.

3. Benefit from the user-generated content

Besides the fact that you can create branded content that has the potential to go viral, you can also take advantage of user-generated content (UGC). The biggest benefits are that users create content without your participation, saving you time, and user-generated content acts as a very strong social proof.

For example, you can ask your customers to create a UGC as part of a testimonial, as a condition for entering a contest, or in exchange for a bonus. 

Plus, the user-generated content may be perfectly linked to a branded hashtag; this way, you achieve two goals at once – get user-generated content and improve your brand awareness. 

That’s how Apple updates its Instagram profile with exclusive users’ photos as part of the contest #ShotonIphone.

4. Track users’ sentiments when it comes to your brand

As for the advanced benefits of social media, the latter does more than make your brand more recognizable. Social networks also allow you to find out what your users really think of you with the help of social media monitoring tools. 

With such social listening tools as Digimind and Mention, you can find out how users perceive your brand and even compare the users’ perception of your brand with a competitor’s. 

5. Monitor and analyze real-time trends

In addition to all the advantages of social media marketing listed above, social networks are a real goldmine for researching trends and hot topics for discussion. 

You can find the most trending hashtags for Instagram and Twitter with Hashtagify as well as discover trendy topics for your SMM posts using Google Trends. Analyze the provided data and come up with your own ideas to engage your audience and make them participate in your discussion. 

6. Enhance customer support

Social media is an innovative and convenient way to connect with a brand without having to call a support team or write an email. 42% of users expect a response from the business on a social network within an hour. 

The greatest way to automate customer support is to use special customer support tools, particularly to introduce a chatbot. This innovative technology will allow you not only to provide instant replies to users but also to share an appealing presentation about your company and special offers, etc.

Use the tailor-made chatbot templates for your business niche to pass the creation and setup process. No coding and technical skills are required.

7. Repurpose content for each of the social platforms

Each of the popular social platforms is unique and opens up new perspectives for you. Even if you’re new to social media marketing, it’s recommended to work with several social networks at once.

You can get social media marketing benefits and use the best functionality of each of them by adapting and repurposing your content. You can also check out social zinger paid SMM ideas to learn more about the benefits of social media for your business.

This is how it works:

• For instance, you can create a video for your YouTube channel and reuse it for IGTV.
• You can share your infographics on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Instagram. Keep in mind that followers prefer informative and creative content rather than educational and fun.
• You can upload your slideshow to Linkedin and share the link on other platforms.
• Beautiful images of your well-crafted product design with their unique and attractive packaging works equally well on Instagram and Pinterest.

One of the greatest benefits of social media is that they have practically no restrictions on creativity and testing new approaches.

7 Social Media Disadvantages You Should Be Aware Of

But what are the disadvantages of using social media? Perhaps, the greatest social media cons are the opportunity to find out too much about human nature and that social media users may not be as kind as you want them to be. And that’s not all.

There are other social media disadvantages you as a business owner should know about: 

1. The risk of getting negative feedback

There is always a risk of getting negative customer testimonials and responses because it is impossible to satisfy everyone. In the case of social networks, each negative review becomes visible to all your subscribers, including your current and potential customers.

However, there is a way to turn this flaw into one of the hidden advantages of social networking by showing a personalized approach, a quick response to a complaint, and a real solution to the customer’s problem. This will strengthen your reputation in the eyes of your followers.

Honda’s reply is a great example of how to react to bad comments, strengthening brand authority.

What’s more, a slow-loading website can also cause a negative response from users. Sometimes poor server performance leads to a slow-loading website. Thus, people migrate from a poor-performing server to another best in the business. For instance, some even try to redirect their GoDaddy domain to prevent digital pitfalls.

2. The necessity to constantly come up with something new

The amount of content consumed on social networks is constantly growing. Consequently, users get tired and bored quickly and always require something new. In order to constantly engage your users and attract new subscribers, you will have to come up with something new almost every day.

Be prepared for the fact that you have to shoot videos, go live, come up with jokes, develop interesting and profitable promotions, generate leads through various advertising channels, and so on. In other words, you have to dance on stage in front of your users day after day.

Don’t know how to diversify your business profiles? Take a look at these 105 exciting ideas of content that will help you fill up your SMM calendar.

3. Social media is not a perfect fit for all types of business

For example, you are unlikely to be able to sell bio weight loss supplements on Instagram since hashtags like #weightloss are not allowed. The same goes for the dating business. 

And by the way, check out the list of prohibited hashtags on Instagram and Facebook – some of them are directly related to business.

In addition, certain types of businesses must take the pros and cons of social media into account before launching advertising campaigns. 

For example, you might be able to attract users to a bridal salon profile, but you probably won’t be able to keep them after they buy a dress and get married. In this case, you will not have a subscriber base – and at best, there will be just a stream of new users who will come, buy, and leave.

4. There are user segments you can’t reach with social media

The next social media con is that you cannot reach certain segments of users.

For example, if you sell tomato seeds to retirees, they expect you to send them a printed catalogue by mail instead of an advertising campaign on Facebook.

5. Your ad campaigns may be costly in the case of a mistake

As we said, one of the advantages of social media marketing is that popular social media gives you the flexibility to customize your ad settings. And in general, advertising on social networks is quite inexpensive, but only if you set up your advertising campaign correctly.

In the event of a mistake with the target audience, region, or language of the advertising campaign, there are big risks of wasting your social media ads budget and getting zero ROI.

6. Organic social media promotion is time-consuming

You shouldn’t expect instant social media payoffs. What is more, it will be quite difficult to attract the first few hundred subscribers since, according to social media psychology, it is more comfortable for users to subscribe to an already popular profile. A large number of subscribers is a kind of “quality guarantee” in social networks.

Social media promotion will take a lot of time and effort. You may have to hire an SMM specialist who will deal with this task exclusively or outsource your social media promotion to a marketing agency.

7. Your competitors can easily copy your strategy

One of the controversial points is that social media is a goldmine of valuable information about business strategies. 

Unfortunately, not only you but also your competitors can observe what you do to attract and retain customers, what ideas you develop and try, how you collect testimonials, and what tools you use for advertising.

In general, there is nothing wrong with this because you can analyze the actions of your competitors while remaining in the shadows as well. However, it will feel unfair if you come up with a truly mind-blowing strategy and your competitors just copy it.

Conclusion

There are a lot of social media marketing benefits, but there are also some drawbacks. That is why the key to successful social media promotion is the skill to overcome pitfalls and multiply the benefits. 

Our social media marketing team knows how to deal with modern users to attract their attention to brands within different niches. Get in touch with us to get more SMM insights and realize them in your future strategy!