The Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing: What You Need to Know

Social media has exploded in popularity in the past decade, growing by a staggering 89% in the past seven years alone. It’s estimated that there are now (2024) 5.17 billion people using social media – approximately 63.6% of the entire world’s population. 

With so many people actively using platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and others, businesses should have their fingers on the pulse of their customer base and leverage the power of social media marketing to generate quality leads. 

What are some of the pros and cons of social media marketing that businesses should be aware of? How can businesses enjoy the benefits of social media marketing whilst developing robust business social media strategies that actually work? 

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms by businesses to increase brand awareness and recognition, increase sales, and reach a massive user base of potential customers. This generally involves creating content – either written, e.g. X (Twitter), or short-form video, e.g. TikTok – that draws users’ attention and engages them, hopefully to ask about your product/service.

Business owners must incorporate social media in their digital marketing strategy due to their popularity and their rise in search traffic. Google dominates search engine traffic with over 3.5 billion searches per day and a 91% market share, of course, but competitor search engines are also growing. Around 41% of TikTok users (64% for Gen Z) use it as a search engine, and just its search engine alone is trailing behind YouTube, Bing, and Google in terms of daily traffic generated. 

The Pros of Social Media Marketing

Increased Brand Awareness

Social media marketing for business owners enables brand promotion to a much wider audience, introducing your product/service to potentially millions of new prospective customers.

Cost-Effective Marketing

The cost of social media marketing can vary depending on the social media services used and the form of advertising, e.g. guerrilla marketing vs pay-per-click advertising.

One way to save time and money is to consider turning one piece of content into multiple pieces spread across various social media services. A short-form video can easily be uploaded to multiple platforms, for example. 

Improved Customer Engagement

One of the biggest benefits of social media marketing is that it puts you in direct digital contact with customers, enabling them to comment, like, and share your content but also to get direct feedback or to have their enquiries answered. Naturally, this means you will need to be quick to respond in a professional manner.

Targeted Advertising

Social media platforms use algorithms and/or user-selected preferences to show users content in their feed. Businesses can leverage specific niches and keywords to target their ads directly to those that would most likely be interested in purchasing your product/service through targeted ad campaigns.

Enhanced Analytics and Insights

Much like the previous point, social media marketing allows businesses to obtain relevant and detailed key performance indicators (KPIs) such as impressions, likes and shares, conversion rates, and much more.

Boost in Website Traffic and SEO

Generating a social media presence for your business can pay off in dividends, complementing your existing business website and SEO efforts. Google and other search engines can now understand the connection between your business profiles on social media platforms and your website, boosting your traffic and pushing you up in the algorithm’s search results.

The Cons of Social Media Marketing

Time-Consuming

One of the biggest social media marketing challenges is just how time-consuming it can be for some business owners. Fortunately, there are some automation tools and tips like spreading content across multiple platforms that can reduce the time and effort needed.

Negative Feedback and Brand Damage

Being in direct digital contact with customers can be a double-edged sword. Disgruntled customers can damage your brand reputation in comments, so it is essential to manage these comments diplomatically and to rectify these sorts of situations as best you can.

High Competition

Social media may seem like a goldmine for businesses to increase their reach and marketing efforts, but it’s also rife with competition. Routine and relevant posts and content can help your business stand out from competitors, however.

Ad Fatigue

When users see hundreds or thousands of ads per day, it can lead to ad fatigue and an overall net decrease in engagement. Avoid maintaining the same ad campaign for too long and refresh your approach as needed.

Privacy and Security Issues

Data privacy and data security are amongst the most important issues for social media users, which is why the European Union enacted the Digital Services Act Regulation 2022. Business owners – even those operating outside of the EU but in any commercial sense with regards to EU residents – must abide by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with regards to user data and consent.

Algorithm Changes

Every so often, major search engines and social media services update their closely guarded algorithms. These algorithm changes may be intended to benefit users and to eliminate spam, for example, but they can sometimes negatively affect genuine content. Business owners should be up to speed with algorithm changes to maintain consistent activity.

Image Source: Unsplash

Balancing the Pros and Cons

Assessing Your Business Needs

Not all social media platforms operate the same nor do they tend to reach out to the same demographics. Consider the nature of your business and your product/service offering and choose which social media platforms tend to work best for promoting them. For example, video-based content can be challenging but highly rewarding; photo content is highly adaptable to most platforms.

Creating a Balanced Strategy

Far too often, business owners create multiple social media accounts only to leave them dormant and inactive. It’s often much better to have a few social media profiles that regularly post relevant, quality content and engages with users than to have a dozen accounts that haven’t posted content since a decade ago.

Social Media Marketing with Digital Funnel

Social media marketing is essential for businesses today, although it can be challenging to implement properly. The rewards are certainly worth the effort, though. Business social media marketing can generate significant traffic from an enormous userbase, increase brand reach, and generate sales.

Digital Funnel is a leading digital marketing agency based in Cork, Ireland. We welcome you to request a free review from Digital Funnel today and enquire about our SEO services, PPC & web development services tailored to your business’ needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much time should I dedicate to social media marketing?

If your business is active on social media, you should endeavour to spend about 1-2 hours per day promoting it. This may include taking photos and writing blog posts, engaging with user comments, analysing your performance metrics, and reading about new trends.

How can I measure the effectiveness of my social media campaigns?

Depending on the social media platform, you ought to be able to measure the effectiveness of your social media campaigns with various analytics tools provided. Some performance metrics to consider include conversion and click-through rate (CTR), growth in followers, and the overall sentiment of comments.

What type of content should I post?

All of your business social media content should be original, high-quality, relevant, and engaging for your target audience. Examples of content that are often useful include educational infographics, promotional material, behind-the-scenes of your business, and informative blog posts.

How often should I post on social media?

The optimal frequency of social media posting is highly dependent on the platform used, the algorithm’s preferences, and the type of product/service that your business offers. As a very general rule of thumb, you should post at least one piece of content per day no matter the platform.

What should I do if receive negative comments or reviews?

Negative comments or reviews can be challenging to deal with for business owners. It is important to act professionally and fairly, especially if replying where all users can see the interaction. You may wish to take things offline and rectify the matter over the phone or through private chat or email.

Do I need to spend money on social media ads?

This totally depends on the campaign goals. It is not compulsory to spend on social media ads to promote your business, however organic growth can be very laborious and time-consuming and generally paid advertising campaigns are more effective for business owners.