Social Media's Influence on Brand Value

As online business owners across the globe struggle to find ways to attract potential clients to their businesses using social media, let us now take a look at some key points as to how social media can influence a brand value. Social media has positive and negative influence on online businesses.

Social Media’s positive influence on brand value

Helps build consumer relationships- Social networking sites let you chat live with your consumers. When you resolve their queries, it automatically creates a good impression on your brands and services.

Helps you reach maximum target audience – The social networking sites are where your consumers are! There are millions and millions of people using Twitter, Facebok and the likes. So, it gives you a great opportunity to reach your target audiences in all age groups. As a matter of fact, recent surveys suggest that more and more people above the age of 55 are signing up new accounts with Facebook and Twitter. After all, they too want to stay connected with their good old buddies and business partners!

Gives you the advantage of word of mouth marketing – When visitors find their preferred offers in your brands and services, then they are probably going to share your links and product offers with friends and colleagues. Today you might have just hundred users but word of mouth marketing can take the number to over thousands.  

Cost-effective – Of course, this is the biggest advantage of social media to small and local online businesses. Facebook, Twitter and the likes are easy to use and you don’t have to spend a penny to promote your brands on the social networking sites.

Brand recognition – Social media helps give an identity to small and local businesses. By posting your messages, you are letting people know about the kind of services you offer and how it can benefit them. And when they like them, they are just going to talk about it. All the positive views that they give for your brands can help give a powerful identity to your brand on the social media space.

Customer service – People don’t have the patience to call toll free numbers or wait for an email reply anymore! Social media gives you an easy way to resolve your customer queries and post messages about emergency situations, if any. The emergency or crisis situation may arise when your website is down and you want to let your consumers when it will be fixed and stuff like that.

Social Media’s negative influence on brand value

Time consuming – Promoting your brands on the social media sites can be really time-consuming. As social media is all about online conversation, it is definitely going to take you so much time. Though social media promotion is free, you certainly need to have man power to be able to respond to consumer queries which can sometimes be tedious and difficult to manage.

Risk of criticism – If your social media marketing is clumsy, then there are chances that people may thrash your brand’s reputation. See to that you don’t go raise a ‘buy’ call to your products, that is, you shouldn’t sound too promotional with your marketing efforts. Think from the customer’s point of view and keep your promotions simple but effective.

There are both positive and negative influences of social media on online businesses. However, as we see, thousands of small and local online businesses have been benefitted by social media. But you need to keep in mind that consumer views are very important as they can make or break a brand’s reputation. So it’s important that you manage your social media marketing effectively and make your promotions consumer-friendly. 

  Mark Bennett

About the Guest Author:

This is a guest post by Mark Bennett of Onlinecomcast.com, a site that offers savings and current information on the best comcast cable rates and internet speeds.