The Internet is filled with info, but much of it is unreliable. Everyone is trying to share tips, sell an e-book or promote their course on social media. Before enrolling in TikTok university, get the facts straight about some social media myths in this article.
One of the most revolutionary aspects of Web2 and Web3 is that these iterations of the World Wide Web allowed users to contribute and take ownership of content on the Internet.
This produced many benefits for the Web and brought about rapid growth in platforms and content available.
There's a catch, though! When everyone can produce and publish content online, at least some inaccurate content will appear. There's not only a lot of misinformation on social media but also about social media.
However, you can only benefit from staying on top of what is fact and what is fiction.
Bust some myths and stay social media-informed with media update's Joreke Kleynhans.
1. Social media is purely casual
Like most things in life, social media is what you make of it. While it was originally meant to be a personal means of connection, there's no reason it can't be used professionally to benefit brands.
Social media can be a powerful tool for connecting and engaging with your audience. Many brands have successfully used social media to:
- market themselves
- increase brand awareness
- conduct customer service, and
- even recruit team members.
2. Brands need to be on every social media platform
Being present where your target audience spends most of their time is crucial for successful social media campaigning. However, most of the time, the demographic you are targeting will prefer one or two platforms over the rest.
When compiling your social media strategy, you need to determine the following to choose the right platforms:
- your target demographic's specific characteristics like age, profession, income and digital literacy
- what you want to achieve with your social media, and
- the formats you plan to distribute your content in.
Once you've determined the facts, compare them to the most common demographics on each social media platform. This allows you to evaluate whether your efforts in that area will be highly effective or less productive in producing the results you want to achieve.
3. Social media has little impact on revenue
The impact of social media on the growth of a business — in many different aspects — isn't necessarily front and centre for visibility. It has more of an indirect effect but a significant one nonetheless.
Social media contributes to:
- the constant presence of a brand in the consumer's mind
- the desire consumers have for a brand
- the marketing of products and services, and
- the reach of promotional campaigns.
These smaller victories contribute to sales success and, therefore, to the overall goal of increasing revenue.
4. Numbers are the best indicator of social media success
Social media is a numbers game. The more followers, likes, shares and clicks an account receives, the more 'successful' it is deemed.
Social analytics can be used to measure the performance of campaigns, but the most relevant evaluation tool will be determined by the pre-set campaign objectives.
An awareness-focussed campaign is one of the few opportunities for using only engagement and reach as evaluation metrics. With this type of campaign, the objectives and goals probably align well enough with the available analytics tools to make for effective measurement of success.
A sales-focussed campaign will be measured by the conversion rate of your communication. A brand is much better off getting fewer impressions with a higher conversion rate than getting millions of impressions with a low conversion rate. In this case, likes, followers and impressions alone aren't giving you the most relevant information to evaluate your success.
A corporate social investment (CSI) social media campaign is a bit more complicated to measure. The effects of such a campaign are more widespread and are best measured over a long-term social impact measurement. However, a social media campaign informing an audience about a CSI initiative can be measured with social media analytics.
Of course, the numbers are necessary, but the true insights lie in sentiment analysis.
5. Social media is only beneficial to B2C companies
Business-to-consumer (B2C) companies are very prominent on social media, but social media also holds great benefits for Business-to-Business (B2B) companies, including:
- lead generation
- humanising your brand
- content marketing, and
- promoting a positive brand presence.
It's important to remember that, while B2B marketing doesn't target consumers, it still targets the people who make decisions in consumer businesses.
In other words, you're still marketing to humans, except now the objective is not to convince them of your value but to convince them to advocate for what you have to offer.
A different approach may be required, but B2B companies can still achieve success on social media.
Do you have any social media hot takes? Let us know in the comment section below.
If you need social media tips the way we need coffee, we've got just the article for you! Read more about Using personal social media to bolster your brand.
*Image courtesy of Canva