Social media help in interactions among people in which they share, create and/or exchange ideas and information in virtual networks and communities. Because of a large crowd in a single platform, websites owning companies are allowing for advertising into them. Many companies are interested to promote in those websites. Now we will see the pros and cons of social media advertising.
- Pros: The advantages with social media advertising are as follows.
- Targeting: There are many targeting options are available based on age, location, language, gender, education, interest, friends, friends of friends, relationship status, actions taken, occupation, job title etc.
- Wider range: 500 million users spend 700 billion hours only on Facebook per month. There are some other popular websites (like Google plus). Every one of this provides the connectivity worldwide.
- Relationship building: Social networking enables to share data like photos, videos, articles etc. It also provides direct chat with one to one. So the relationship building with the customers will be easy and strong.
- Feedback from customers: Feedback from the customers is free in the social media. It helps to more innovative in developing the product and services. You can conduct surveys and ask question and can modify according to the results. It helps to learn more about the customers.
- Spread of information: The spread of information in the social networking is very faster and vast. Once a company posted its product and any followers are liked it they can share immediately to their contacts in the network.
- Cost efficient: The social networking pages are free to create and promote. For maintenance, it may a little expensive.
- Cons: The cons or disadvantages with the social media advertising are as follows:
- Time consuming: The content in the websites have to be update freshly. It is difficult with the existing employees everyday sometime spending on that. Otherwise you need to hire a new person to keep on update the content everyday.
- No control: Once the content is posted into the website, it is almost out of your control. It is free to comment by any user. Some users comment negatively on the company or/and on the product. It is really a challenge for the company’s marketing team, because it will negatively impact in the public.
- Need high innovation: If the page and the content is same every day, it will lead to lack of impression on the company page. So need to make the changes everyday or at least for a particular intervals. So, people need to be more innovative to attract the customers and to stay with them.
The pros and cons vary depend upon the ability of the people and the company. Social networking is useful to grow business. It helps interact with a larger number of customers than any other medium does.