Pro: Customers Have Direct Access to You
Being active on social media and responding to comments and DMs will elevate your brand and communication with your customers. Giving potential and current customers a direct communication line to your company makes them feel seen, heard, and more informed into what services you provide. Plus, it lets them know that there are actual humans behind your business!
Pro: Streamline Brand Awareness
Social media is one of the best ways to show your brand consistency. It can be shown in the colors you use, the tone in your captions, and the consistent thought leadership information you are providing. If you have the brand consistency down, customers will trust you and know what they’re getting when they visit your profile.
Pro: Hit Two (or More) Birds With One Stone
The beautiful thing about social media is that you can use just one piece of content in multiple ways! Say we had a thought leadership blog on our website about the use of GIFs. We can share that blog directly to LinkedIn or Facebook, post a GIF on Instagram with a caption about the blog, write a thought-provoking tweet about the benefits of GIFs, or make a funny Tik Tok about it. The diversification of using just one piece of content for multiple social media platforms is endless!
Con: Target Audience Might Not Be On Social Media
It’s not just that your target audience might not be on the social media platform you’ve been posting the most on; it’s that your favored social media platform may not be the one that your audience uses the most. Say you are a real estate agent and your target audience is retired couples looking to find their forever home. You probably shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket on Tik Tok, but rather take a look at demographic data to find out what social media platforms older generations tend to use. This will help to bring you better results (cough Facebook cough).
Con: Gaining an Organic Following is Time Consuming (the balance between professional and personal can get blurry)
Viewers can smell if you’re not being authentic from miles away. If your social media is just all sales-y jargon, no one is going to want to watch/list/read your post. Show people the personalities of your employees, the behind-the-scenes action, and the “not-so-put-togethernness” that makes your business authentic and relatable.
Con: Gaining an Organic Following is Time-Consuming
It’s true: people on social media tend to just jump on the bandwagon and follow accounts that already have a good amount of followers. That doesn’t mean you won’t be able to gain followers – just that it will generally just take some time! Be consistent, use the right hashtags, show your face on your stories, and be the thought leader you are!