Since the second half of last year I have noticed an explosion in interest from businesses about using social media. Before then the bias was towards argument for not using it, because it was considered little more than a fad. However, that has now well and truly changed.
Google rolled out their new algorithms, at the beginning of this year, which now take social signals into consideration when ranking web pages. This has had the effect of sharpening the requirement for Businesses to establish a social media presence across a range of channels.
However, the result all too often ends up as a presence being established, a burst of initial enthusiasm and then a gradual slide into apathy through lack of a thought-through strategy.
I’ve written an article about this over at the Website Wings site. Are you a social media butterfly considers the problem of businesses setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts without actually having a clue of how to utilise them for their business.
The fact that social media channels are easy to set up and best of all free leads people to the assumption that they’re easy to understand. They are on a simple level, but the various settings need to be worked with over a period of time to really get to grips with them.
Multiply the time needed to explore and understand the settings of one channel, by the minimum of several needed and you have a time requirement which can be daunting for the person left holding the social media baby.
The result is an increasing amount of noise on social media channels which is little more than bland background elevator music. What businesses don’t realise is that once users are bored by your content, because it lacks relevance, interest or any engagement factor, then that can reflect on your business as being as lack-lustre as your presence on social media.
Food for thought.
Further reading that may be of interest
Is social media a good idea for small businesses
Social Media is about more than establishing just connections
Social media management tools
