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Social media is any website or platform that allow sharing of information, pictures, videos, stories among others to individuals across the world. The internet infrastructure has greatly contributed to the growth of social media.
Pros:
1. Brand promotion: Businesses can use social media to create product awareness and promote the product to customers.
2. Internal communication: Social media can be used for internal communication within the organization. Company news and policies changes are made to employees at any time through social media.
3. Instant feedback: It offers 24/7 communication with friends and customers. You can keep in touch and also get feedback about your products and services.
4. Engage employees: Internal communication through social media can engage and inspire employees within the organization. Comments shared encourage more interaction within the company.
5. Job adverts: Organizations use social media to advertise job openings, look for candidates and verify their background information.
6. Cost-effective: Communication through social media platforms is very cheap. You can use any device from anywhere to communicate on the social network. Compared to other channels of marketing, social media marketing is relatively cheap.
7. Large audience: Information communicated through the social media network can be shared with a large number of people within minutes. You can also reach to a large number of people at the same time.
8. Market research tool: You can use social media tools to get insight into current market trends and competitors’ products and how they satisfy the customer’s needs.
9. Information goes viral: Great content posted on social media can go viral and be shared over various platforms like Facebook, Twitter among other platforms attracting a massive impact.
10. Wide use: Social media can be used not only for social interaction and marketing but also for news, business intelligence, information search, customer care service and other services.
Cons:
1. Time commitment: Using social media for marketing and building social community require a lot of time, dedication, and commitment in order to get desired results.
2. No control of shared data: You can’t control or restrict the amount of data accessed by the public. Information shared through the social network can go viral and you don’t have control over who accesses it.
3. Changing privacy terms: Various social media keep on changing their privacy terms and conditions leaving you with no choice but to adjust your strategies to keep up with these changes.
4. Difficult to measure Return on investment: Although the data analytics can show your popularity and the traffic you’re generating from the social media, it is difficult to measure your returns.
5. Open to the public: All messages shared through the social media are open to scrutiny by the public. Any mistakes made on information posted social media may impact the image of the company.
6. Unreliable information: Sometimes information posted on the social media channel is unreliable. Fake information can be spread through the network. Companies may engage in unethical marketing practices.
7. A long-term affair: Once you decide to use social media for your business, you need to be always available for your followers to trust your credibility.
8. Cyberbullying: There is freedom of communication and expression in social media and some people may use the opportunity to cyberbully others by making them feel bad about themselves.
9. Addictive: If you don’t have a clear plan, you may spend a lot of your productive time on social media.
10. Identity theft: Social media sites can’t verify the identity of people signing up leaving some people vulnerable to online predators.
