​Brand Awareness Is Improved

Since so many people are using social media, they are much more easily introduced to your brand. When you share quality content and your customers are exposed to it, your brand awareness will increase. With this exposure, your brand will reach more awareness than you could have gotten with old school marketing. On top of that, it happens a lot quicker because the social media world is a fast-paced one.

Target Audience

When posting on social media, you're interacting as your brand. That means the advertising will speak more directly to your target audience. Your potential customers want to feel acknowledged and social media makes it possible. People will feel more connected to your brand.

Improving Inbound Traffic

Inbound traffic is vital for the success of a company. This is when you attract potential customers even before they're ready to buy. Inbound marketing is considered one of the best ways to take people from being strangers to being loyal customers. Of course, you need to have the right content and marketing strategy for this to happen. This will be discussed in future manuals.

Gain Better Market Insights

It is much easier to gain market insight thanks to the many free analytical tools available on social media. That kind of knowledge helps to build social media marketing strategies that really work.

It's Very Cost-Effective

Marketing on social media can be surprisingly cost-effective, especially if you do it right. Signing up is easy and free. You can expect to pay for advertisements but with the high return on investment (ROI) rate social media marketing offers, it's much more cost-effective than traditional marketing.

Be sure to finish Deer Graphics' marketing course, before you start with any marketing.

Time-Consuming Process

Although social media marketing advantages include being affordable, it can swallow up a lot of your time. Google processes over 40,000 searches every second. And if you're doing things right, your content will show up in the search results. With that said, you need to create interesting and fresh content regularly. Consistency is key and that means you'll be creating new content and doing on-going research all the time. Frequently sharing new content takes up a lot of time so it can be very time-consuming. And time is money.

Competitor Exposure

Using social media for marketing means everyone can see your content. This, unfortunately, includes your competition.

On the flip side, you're also able to see what competitors are doing and lear from them.

Brand Name Is Vulnerable

A very big social media disadvantage is that it is easy to tarnish the good name of a company. If negative information gets shared on social media, it can spread like wildfire. The public will see it and sometimes they'll take part in the negativity. Potential customers will be deterred from dealing with you. When something like that happens, you must react immediately. Swift reaction could save your company. Make sure that you are always professional and handle negativity with care.

Slow Return On Income Results

Marketing a business on social media is a long-term investment. It is a successful and effective strategy, but it takes time. The ROI (return on income) is great but timely. The benefits of social media are many (as you've seen) but fast results aren't one of them. You should not expect overnight results when marketing by social media means.

Qualified Staff Are Needed

Any good strategy needs a good team to execute it. If you want to focus on your important business matters, we highly recommend that you hire someone to run your social media marketing. Using social media for business purposes isn't the same as when it's for personal accounts.

The difference between a Facebook Business Page and a Personal Facebook page. Facebook Business page represents a business or brand and showcases the services it provides. On the other hand, a Personal page is used to share updates about the user's personal life and to connect with friends and family. Facebook is a little old-school. BUT, if used properly, it can be a hugely useful tool for acquiring both page views and clients.

Facebook is a thriving community that every business must strongly consider as they develop a marketing plan.  Having a Facebook Business Page also lets you rank higher on your SEO.  You might have seen when searching for a company, one of the first things that jump up on the left is their Facebook Page.  

Relationships are easy to build

Business and customers can both interact with each other using Facebook. Facebook is equipped with instant messaging features that can be used to send and receive messages. Other ways of communication like reviews and comments also exist on Facebook. This helps to build long term relationships with your customer.

Any form of media can be used

From infographics, videos, links, podcasts. This makes Facebook for Business a versatile hub for marketing to your prospects.

Reach

One of the biggest benefits of a Facebook business page is organic reach, it provides opportunities for your business's content to be shown to people on Facebook through likes, shares, and comments. Once a customer knows about your business, they can visit your page to know more about your company. And if a customer likes your page, all the new posts of your business can be seen by them through the newsfeed.

Affordability

Posting contents , and joining groups can be done free of cost. Other than that, businesses can boost posts on a page for a lower cost. This makes Facebook an affordable option for even smallest business entities.

Brand Strengthen

The business brand can also be strengthened with the help of Facebook. Once a customer finds out about your business, they can get engaged with your other products as well.

Spam

The amount of spam can be incredible. Forget the trolls that come along and try to stir up trouble. If your online presence gets large enough and people believe you have some influence, then the spam links and posts that your content is going to receive will be incredible. Many other businesses will try to boost their own reputation with a piggyback ride on your own. Even if you put restrictions in place, all someone has to do is like your page to post a comment. This adds another level to the monitoring that is required to keep your online reputation where it needs to be.

You don't have control.

Although you're utilizing a marketing service through Facebook, you're not the one who is in control of that service. Because you're promoting yourself through Facebook, you are subject to the various rule changes, privacy policy changes, and other procedures that seem to be continuously in flux. Your business page can even be deleted without your permission if Facebook feels like it is violating their terms of services.

Maintenance

Maintaining a Facebook page is a very time-consuming process. A separate set of staff members with proper training needs to be deployed. These people also make sure that pages are regularly updated with contents and other measures are taken to make sure that the customers are engaging.

A platform where users can capture, edit and share photos, videos and messages. To take your followers behind the scenes, expand your reach with hashtags. Showcase the solution you provide by creating shareable content that entices users to tag and share with friends. Be sure to regularly update the clickable link in the bio section and use it to drive event registrations and purchases.

It gives customers a visual reference

Pictures and videos are literally worth 1,000 words of content on the internet today. When you're trying to show your targeted demographics the exact value your products or services have to offer, visual graphics can do a lot. Seeing is believing.

It was created specifically for mobile devices.

nstagram has made it super easy to post photos and videos from your smartphone. Posts of images that the user posts on Instagram are going to remain on the platform forever unless the user deletes the post from his profile. If Millennials are your targeted group. You become part of an effective social platform that offers content which is easy to share to other mobile devices.

Hashtags make it easy to connect with people.

Hashtags can also make it easy to have new followers connect with an account. It helps to extend the reach of a business through simple searches that the 150+ million users of the platform perform daily. This makes it a very cost-effective way to extend the reach of a brand while being able to filter in or filter out results as needed for specific goals. Ran out of ideas on hashtags? Simply type in Google - Instagram hashtags for (your business.

Responses happen in real time.

Most businesses will see over half of the comments their post will receive within the first 6 hours of it going live. In return, adjustments can be made so that what is being offered can be promoted with a maximized value proposition.

The main disadvantage that comes to mind is probably that Instagram is not a platform that just focuses on businesses. Usually, people use Instagram to pass time and connect with other people. There is only a small percentage of people or users who have the intention of buying something that they see on their news feed.

Because it relies heavily on images.

Poor images will cause people that follow you to skip your page in their feed and not read the messages in your description. Instagram pictures need to be square in dimensions. Using non-square images will cause parts of the image to not appear perfectly in the people's news feed. That means that your message or your branding can get sloppy because not all the words may be shown.

Your targeted audience might not have an Instagram account

Instagram is a social platform that is dominated by the younger age demographics. Although older users are exploring Instagram with more frequency, it's a good bet that the average viewer is going to be young, with limited discretionary spending, and that may not be who you want hearing your brand message right now.

Limitations to your content

On Instagram, you cannot explain further the product in your post. You can only upload the videos that are about 60 seconds long. If you plan on using multiple hashtags, it is advisable to use only 5 to 10 hashtags. Using too many hashtags can easily be the reason for your account to be banned. Also, the ideal length of captions for Instagram is 138 to 150 characters. Refer to your (Know your client Form you compiled in Module 1) when writing your captions.

There isn't much room for additional content

Some images require a little explanation, but Instagram doesn't offer much space to make that happen. It's also difficult to create a comprehensive company bio on this platform, which makes it a little hard for followers to get to know who you really are.

Businesses are not allowed to use clickable links

This doesn't mean you can't use a URL when taking advantage of Instagram for Business. It just means your followers will need to visit your page and click on the URL in order to visit your site.

Less advertising

You don't have to face the problem with a bunch of advertisements like the other social networking sites do.

You can add links

You can let your followers know about a new business, product, service, website, blog, eBook. You can tweet or re-tweet. You can mark favorites; you can send the tweets by mentioning the specific people

Reach a wide audience

Twitter has a large user base, which could include your potential customers. Using hashtags can help you reach an audience interested in a topic or in a particular location.

Deliver customer service

The platform allows direct two-way communication with your customers. Because it's a public interaction, if you do it well it shows your business in a positive light

Brand identity

Being on Twitter can help communicate your brand ethos and personality. This should help your business appeal to your target audience.

Feedback

Twitter can be a useful resource for gathering feedback from customers.

Cost

It is free of charge to set up a Twitter account. While paid ads are available, many businesses see benefits from organic posts and interactions

You can't upload the videos

You can only add the links of different sites. Making it less effective for the visual content and it is mostly text-based.

Tweets can also lose the time

If you are following a large number of people, you might want to hire someone to repeat the tweets, as they become buried with the millions of other tweets that are generated.

Time consuming

Maintaining a presence on Twitter requires a time commitment. It's also important that the staff looking after the account have the right skills and training. Unless you tweet at the right time, when your followers are online, your tweets could easily be missed. Some experts say you should tweet at least 20 times a day, re-tweet and comment, to make a difference.

Negative criticism

Customers could complain publicly about products or services. Negative comments can reflect badly on your business. However, dealing with complaints well can have a positive impact on your reputation, just make sure not to miss them in this fast paced social network site.

Spam

As all social media, be wary of spam accounts on Twitter. Do not click on suspicious links from users you don't know.

Limitations

You are restricted by Twitter's 280-character limit. It can take time to learn how to communicate effectively with brevity. 

Since I cannot see any disadvantages of being on Google My Business, I will discuss the advantages only.

Claiming and Optimizing your Google My Business Profile (GMB)

A GMB profile that is optimized and up to date signals to Google that your profile is relevant for users searching for your product or service and can potentially show your profile in Google. Before you can optimize your GMB profile, you'll need to claim it. Check on whether you have already claimed your business by signing into your Google account you use for your business.

Messaging Through Google My Business

Google also has a messaging feature that lets businesses directly chat with customers who find their profile on the search results page. Through this feature, businesses will be able to quickly answer questions and assist current and potential customers. You'll need to turn on this feature within your Google My Business dashboard to begin receiving messages.

Business Description and Product Posts

You can add a business description for your business. Google Posts are designed to highlight your products. You can add a photo or video to best showcase the product's features, product name, minimum and maximum price, a 100-300-word description and a Call to Action button. GMB also has “Offer Posts”; these types of posts enable business owners to offer a promotional sale or offer from your business.

Video

Video can take up to 24 hours before the video content is available on the listing.

Videos lead to higher engagement

Opportunity to showcase your business products, customer service, inside of your business operations.

Videos can be informational in nature about your services

Google Business Video Guidelines include:

Video Max Duration: 30 seconds

Video Max File size: 100 MB

Video Min Resolution: 720p

Videos are also supported in Google Posts, Events, Offers, Products.

Reviews

Allows people to leave reviews - never underestimate the power of customer reviews, especially when it comes to search rankings. People see online reviews as personal recommendations.  ALWAYS reply to your review.  It comes with powerful features that provide valuable insights, that you can use in your marketing material too.