If you’re advertising through social media for a small business, you may not feel like it’s important to have a concrete policy or set of rules in place. Especially when you’ve only got a few followers, social media for small business can start to feel like an afterthought, and hiring social media marketing firms may seem completely out of the question.
But social media marketing firms, or at least social media marketing experts, are crucial to running a successful social media campaign, not just because they know how to market your business, but also because they know how risky social media can be.
Social media is a cost-effective and powerful way to get your products and company name before a wider audience, but it’s also incredibly risky. Messing up on social media doesn’t result in a slap on the risk. It can damage your financial standing and your reputation, especially in a world where a single tweet can go viral in minutes.
It’s easy for companies that don’t employ social media marketing firms to fall into the trap of relying on the wrong person to represent them online. Think about all the social media gaffes in the past year alone, and how often it was one person who made a bad decision while they had access to the company Twitter.
It may not even be that employee’s fault. People who aren’t trained to use social media don’t always understand the risks of creating and maintaining a high-profile presence, or they may think that so few people view the account that they can get away with a joke made in poor taste.
They may also fail to understand that a post on social media doesn’t vanish with a simple deletion. If your mistake attracts attention, it could be screen-capped for posterity hundreds of times before someone wises up and hits the delete button.
Though larger businesses have more at risk, they also have the funds and reputation to recover from mistakes. Small businesses rarely have the same resources.
To avoid landing in a tough situation because of your social media strategy, hire experts to manage your social media pages. It may cost a little more, but it’s often worth the cost to mitigate the risks.
