Coping in the World of Social Media
How Traditional Businesses can Weather the Social Media Times
Newspapers, magazines, ad agencies, and other print publications have been around more years than we could count on our fingers. Tabloids or broadsheets have been our staple reading material every morning. Sheets were turned and news will come out to tell us the latest thing that happened during the past day. Nowadays, people are glued to the Internet where they get the latest breaking news from Twitter and other sites.
There’s the cable television, where the kids used to huddle around and watch movie offerings for family night. Today, you can watch on your computer endless streams of videos from popular TV shows you love. Subscriptions for cable connection continue to drop and go flat-rate. Although these media are still effective vehicles for ads, more attention is being shifted online. The web has become THE hub for ads, copywriting campaigns, how-to videos and other marketing devices for all types of businesses.
Consumers are turning away from traditional media sources –television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books and other print media. They rely on word of mouth and the recommendation of their family and friends about the best products to buy for whatever need. They log on to the Internet and look for product reviews and store suggestions on social media sites. These make the commercials and ads shown on the TV, radio and magazines rather obsolete. This affected publication so much that the number of prints has drastically lowered since social media entered the marketing and advertising sphere.
This is proven by the PEW Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, they discovered that print advertising is slowly falling while online ads continue to rise.
As you can see from the data above, print ads steadily falls from 2003-2011. Even though the number of online ads fluctuates, the revenue shows an increasing trend. These show there are more people watching out for online ads than print ones. This reiterates the current situation where online marketing campaigns dominate over traditional advertising methods.
As the traditional setup do not effectively work as much as they did, entrepreneurs now venture into social media to see if they can successfully use it to attract more customers. They try to apply the methods they learned in the old media, but realize that the tried-and-true techniques don’t prosper on the web.
Social media thrives on reviews and recommendations. The fate of an online business lies in the reactions of customers who have gone to try the merchandise for themselves. If customers like your store, they give recommendations to people they know. They might even feel so inclined to write a positive review that conveys their satisfaction with your workmanship, customer service, and staff.
This makes it important for customers to love your store. The World Wide Web is getting smaller, with customers holding the upper hand. They can write reviews that influence other people. Make sure to delight your clientele. Once you have their trust, they’ll keep coming back and refer you to other people who haven’t discovered you yet.
The pressure is on for social media professionals to help businesses generate the necessary marketing leads online. They must assist entrepreneurs in maintaining an unimpeachable online reputation. A proliferation of negative reviews against your business drives away customers. Protect your image from harmful reviews and guard against blackball tactics from the competition. It is also advisable to ask happy customers to post their comments on review sites where there are many complaints about your store. The satisfactory reviews will offset the effect of the negative feedback. This will bring back customers to your store to verify whether your service is really good or not.
Reviews also prove the effectiveness of peer influence. Customers listen to people they know. They’re not easily swayed by well-known influencers who have a large network of followers. This is proven by Nielsen research which says, “It can be tempting to go after Social Broadcasters due to their great number of followers or high Klout scores but as real influence is truly tied to close networks…” (sic)
It is not feasible to work with social laggards, as they can only recommend you to a small number of people. People with large networks, or those social broadcasters, do not necessarily make good influencers, either. This is because social broadcasters cannot really connect to everyone in their network. Let’s apply this to your situation. For example, you’re connected online to famous personalities on Twitter who have more than 100,000 followers. When they make public tweets asking everyone to try out this product or so, will you really do so? Maybe so, if you’re a great fan; but not everyone will because they don’t personally know this endorser.
Nielsen further declares that “…the true power of influencing purchasing decisions comes from a person’s close family, friends and peers, a focus on peer influence presents the most viable opportunity for marketers.” This makes it clear that entrepreneurs need to cultivate good relationships with all their customers. These satisfied clients will serve as loyal PR representatives, as they advise their friends, loved ones, and even acquaintances to choose your store over another.
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