Is social media killing your business? That may seem like a strange question considering almost every organisation worldwide wants to use social media to increase followers, make sales and grow their market share. However, many Web3 companies including startups fail to have a targeted strategy for social media marketing. Moreover, they spread their marketing message too thin, with mediocre results.

This post considers the pros and cons of using social media for your Web3 business and how to make a detailed strategy for posting consistent content that gets engagement from your target audience.

Summary

The Pros of Social Media Marketing

• Access & engage with your target audience
• Low or zero-cost marketing
• Create a strong brand message
• Discover user sentiment for your brand
• Real-time trend analysis (to adapt your marketing)
• Real-time customer support
• Repurpose content across multiple channels

The Cons of Social Media Marketing

• Exposure to negative public feedback
• Constant demand for fresh content
• It can be time-consuming
• Difficulty choosing the right platform
• Competitors can replicate your marketing strategy
• Ad campaigns can be costly and unproductive
• Centralised platforms control your account

Social media marketing is powerful. There’s no denying that. If you get it right, your marketing efforts can create a fantastic ROI. However, what does “getting it right” look like? Is it possible to make such a mess of your social media marketing that it becomes detrimental to your business?

The trick is to plan a unique strategy for your business and target audience. Copying your competitors, following a guru’s social media strategy or following guidelines from a book is not the right way to make the maximum impact from your marketing efforts.

In addition, all social media exposure is not beneficial. Your business is vulnerable to keyboard warriors, and sadly, bad news always seems to travel faster than positive reviews. Moreover, you cannot second-guess the public response to a social media marketing campaign. What you think is a great idea may bomb and die a sad online death.

Let’s be clear that we aren’t suggesting you stop posting on social media. Still, the core message in this post is that you become aware of the pros and cons of social media. Primarily, take a step back to create a robust social media strategy that is more likely to hit the mark with your target audience.

Contents

• Why Your Business Needs an Active Social Media Strategy?
• Active Monthly Users for Social Media Channels
• The Pros of Social Media Marketing
  • #1: Attract and Engage with Your Target Audience
  • #2: Low or Zero-cost Marketing
  • #3: Create a Strong Brand Message
  • #4: Discover User Sentiment for Your Brand
  • #5: Real-time Trend Analysis
  • #6: Real-time Customer Support
  • #7: Repurpose Content Across Multiple Channels
• The Cons of Social Media Marketing
  • #1: Exposure to Negative Public Feedback
  • #2: A Constant Demand for Fresh Content
  • #3: Social Media is Time-consuming
  • #4: Difficulty Choosing the Right Platform
  • #5: Competitors can Replicate your Marketing Strategy
  • #6: Ad Campaigns can be Costly and Unproductive
  • #7: Centralised Platforms Control Your Content
• Conclusion: Is Social Media Killing Your Business?

Why Your Business Needs an Active Social Media Strategy?

Marketing without a strategy is like sailing a yacht on the open seas without sails. Many companies randomly post content on their social media pages without prior thought and do the same thing with SMM campaigns.

In addition, social media isn’t slowing down, and, despite the challenges and limitations, new users join social networks every day.

January 2023 data from Data Reportal indicates social media growth.

• 76 billion social media users globally
• Average time spent daily on social media: 2 hours and 31 minutes
• The average number of social platforms used monthly is 7.2
• 4% of the world’s population uses social media
• 8% of (the world population) social media users are over eighteen
• 3% of internet users engage with social media
• The gender balance of social media users: Female: 46.3% and Male: 53.7%

Social media users increased by 376 million between 2021 and 2022, signifying a 10% growth.

Active Monthly Users for Social Media Channels

You may think it’s best to focus your social media marketing on the channels with the most active monthly users. Still, realistically, it’s better to research the audience for each channel. For example, you might use your ad spend on Facebook when most of your audience is on Pinterest. High numbers do not necessarily equate to a return on investment for your time, and advertising spend.

Many more social media channels are online than those shown in the above image.

LinkedIn doesn’t share user statistics but is the most popular for business marketing. According to Hootsuite, LinkedIn has 875 million members, but only 16.2% log in daily. Likewise, fifty-two million people search for jobs on LinkedIn, and 40% of visitors engage with a LinkedIn page every week.

Each social media channel addresses a different audience’s needs, so a deep dive into researching the desires of your target audience will pay dividends when you plan your next marketing campaign.

In the next section, we will discuss seven pros and cons of social media marketing.

The Pros of Social Media Marketing

#1: Attract and Engage with Your Target Audience

Every business wants to build a larger audience of eager buyers, but your social media efforts may often seem to fall flat. However, choosing the best social networking platform for your business genre is a fantastic way to get your brand message in front of your target audience.

Before planning a social media strategy, it’s worth checking if the social network is available in your targeted countries. For instance, Facebook is banned in China, North Korea, Uganda and Russia (Source: Wikipedia).

Another consideration is about choosing the best time to post. For example, if your target audience is USA-based, publishing content at 10 am GMT may not be your best idea. You might find it helpful to use a channel posting calculator to decide the optimum times to post content.

#2: Low or Zero-cost Marketing

Marketing campaigns can quickly eat into your business budgets and not yield the desired results. Most social networks provide flexible and targeted advertising options that you can create for a chosen outreach.

You can set your targeted advertising campaign based on age, gender, location, lifestyle habits, family status, education, interest in similar products and services, and professional status. Once you decide on the right platform, the opportunities to market to your specific buyer persona are unlimited.

In addition, you can set your daily or weekly budget, and, in almost every case, your advertising is more affordable than more traditional routes such as Google PPC ads.

#3: Create a Strong Brand Message

Social media marketing can help you establish your brand with a broad audience. Promoting your brand across all channels with targeted content increases the chances of engagement and sales. Your target audience begins to feel familiar with your brand colours, tone and message. Clear branding helps filter users that are not your ideal persona and appeal to those that are.

#4: Discover User Sentiment for Your Brand

How do users feel about your brand? It’s easy to assume that everyone likes your carefully crafted brand identity, but what do you do if users reflect a negative view of your branding?

Social media marketing is an excellent way to discover if your brand is on point. Your audience responds to your congruent advertising when your branding aligns with your core mission, values, identity, and message.

An excellent way to track user sentiment is to use social media monitoring apps such as Mention or Digimind.

#5: Real-time Trend Analysis

Nobody gets SMM right the first time, and most advertising campaigns require tweaking after the first few adverts. The benefit of social media marketing is that you can measure engagement and results in real-time.

You can research trends, hot topics, and the most popular hashtags. You then adjust your content and marketing campaign to provide engaging and relevant content.

#6: Real-time Customer Support

When you have an active audience, they often post concerns and complaints on your social media pages. Other users observe your prompt responses to positive and negative comments and decide whether they can trust your company.

Ideally, having one or two experienced staff handling engagement on your social media channels is preferable. Choose people skilled in effective communication and capable of escalating a customer’s concerns when necessary.

Real-time customer support adds a layer to traditional customer support routes. One low-cost alternative is to create a chatbot that takes the first responder queries from customers. A chatbot makes the customer feel your company is responding to their concerns.

#7: Repurpose Content Across Multiple Channels

Repurposing content is an effective way of gaining traction with your social network channels. If you create a five-minute video for YouTube, you can break it down into one-minute reels on Facebook and Instagram or use the content to create a slideshow (carousel) for LinkedIn.

• Share infographics and slideshows across multiple channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (check sizings first).
• Create a slideshow or Video of Pinterest images.

There are no limitations to creativity on social media channels. Whatever you create, consider other channels where you can repurpose content.

The Cons of Social Media Marketing

Social media attracts a mixed bag of people, with some appearing intent on causing disruption. There are a few minor disadvantages to social media marketing, which we will now discuss.

#1: Exposure to Negative Public Feedback

When a user posts something negative on your social media posts or marketing campaigns, it’s visible to everyone. Even if the person is a pond-dwelling keyboard warrior living in his mum’s closet, you must still find a way to handle your response with good grace.

The essential thing to consider is that your tailored response is more for the benefit of the “watchers” (your potential customers) than the antagonist. Creating a personal reply is essential, as there’s nothing worse than a packaged response.

If the “complaint” is genuine, offer a public solution to the customer. For example, suppose someone says their order never arrived. Ask them to contact you (offer them a way to do so) and reassure them that you will address their complaint immediately.

One of the primary reasons for potential customers delaying a purchase is uncertainty. If they observe how well your company responds to an issue, it builds trust and reduces the tension of what happens after they purchase a product or service.

#2: A Constant Demand for Fresh Content

The amount of online content consumed across all social media channels is increasing. There’s a constant battle to create unique and engaging content. With a human attention span of 8 seconds, what can you do to attract attention to your content?

Firstly, decide on a content strategy, such as: –

• What social networks to use
• How often will you post (days and times)
• What form of media content: Videos, shorts, reels, carousels, images, or memes? Will you do planned or spontaneous “lives?”
• What is the message: Fun, informative, promotion, authoritative etc

Secondly, to avoid the constant overwhelm of creating something new every day, get the team together and create a content plan for the next month. After that, put the content together and, to save time, use a scheduling tool such as Aggorapulse.

#3: Social Media is Time-consuming

Even with exceptional content and careful planning, results from social media marketing can be slow. For example, suppose you’re building a new YouTube channel. Your team has spent weeks preparing and editing video content, creating thumbnails, and doing keyword and competitor research. After your first month, you have fifty videos on the channel and only three subscribers.

Do you give up? Is YouTube not the right social network for your business?

The trick is to remain consistent and get unbiased feedback on your content. As long as you provide value for your target audience, keep going. Most social media platforms don’t promote new content if the creator hasn’t displayed a history of consistent content creation. Who knows, the next video you create might be the tipping point.

Accept that it takes time to grow a social media following. You may never produce viral content but aim for consistency and content quality, and in time, you will start to see the needle shift.

#4: Difficulty Choosing the Right Platform

Before starting a social media marketing campaign, research the available social networks to establish the right platforms for your unique business. Where do your potential customers “hang out?”

For example, some countries ban cryptocurrencies, so if you want to use a Web3 or crypto hashtag, does the platform allow it? It’s tempting to follow trending social media platforms, such as TikTok, but it might not be the right platform for your business if your ideal customer wouldn’t be seen dead dancing with twelve-year-olds.

#5: Competitors can Replicate your Marketing Strategy

Your social media marketing content is in the public domain. Suppose you create a killer campaign that generates incredible results. Your potential customers are not the only ones watching. Competitors in your industry notice your success and sneakily copy it for their next advertising campaign.

There’s nothing you can do about competitors copying your marketing, but you can monitor their efforts and notice if they have similar results. The trick is, they aren’t you. For example, does their customer service stack up? Are their products or services as excellent as yours? Stay in your lane. Focus on quality and consistency and look after your customers.

#6: Ad Campaigns can be Costly and Unproductive

Many companies try to cut corners and create advertising campaigns in-house. Taking ad creation shortcuts might seem economical, but hiring an expert is better in the long run if you want results.

If you get one aspect of the advertising incorrect, you may get zero ROI and have to start over again.

#7: Centralised Platforms Control Your Content

We’re all pro-decentralisation at CB Recruitment, and for a good reason. If you are active on any social media channels, you understand how much control they have over your content.

Here are a few examples observed recently: –

• LinkedIn impressions dropping considerably
• Facebook group owners denied from posting or commenting in their groups (for no good reason)
• Facebook pages are getting zero traction even with thousands of loyal followers
• Social media gurus’ accounts are closed and banned (for no good reason, except perhaps they had an opinion!)
• YouTube closes user accounts randomly

Suppose you’ve spent years developing a robust social media following, and the platform closes your account in the blink of an eye. It’s not good that centralised social media platforms have so much power.

Over the next year, we anticipate multiple decentralised Web3 social media platforms springing into materialisation, creating Web3 careers and a space for independent content creation.

The tech giants need the challenge, and users will vote with their feet. We’re all tired of being told what we can and cannot do with the content we produce.

Conclusion: Is Social Media Killing Your Business?

To summarise, creating a social media marketing campaign can bring spectacular results for your business. Still, it only works well if you spend sufficient time researching your target audience and the best social network to focus your efforts.

The top Web3 companies focus on a marketing strategy that enraptures their audience, whether the business is an NFT or crypto project, Fintech or Defi or a company implementing blockchain technology.

You don’t need a massive budget if you accept that developing a loyal following with your ideal clients takes time. Commit to providing daily value, go above and beyond with customer service and surprise your audience with spectacular offers, free advice and an endless variety of exciting, fun and informative content.

Suppose you need help with social media for your business and don’t have anyone with the right skills. In that case, CB Recruitment has access to top-tier talent, including experienced Web3 social media managers. Contact the CBR team today to discuss your options.