Social media is a very important tool in this day and age when it comes to reaching a wide array of customers with a variety of interests.  Thanks to social media, businesses are now able to connect with potential customers across the world and most website and blog owners will use at least one form of social media.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Through social media marketing you can provide personal selling, advertising, publicity, public relations, sales promotion and direct marketing.  It is hence invaluable for business owners and blog owners.  Generally, a social media campaign will try to attract the attention of internet users and encourage them to share the content of the website or blog it promotes with other users they connect with through social media.

Using social media marketing has been demonstrated to improve customer service and increases brand awareness.  Most importantly, social media is often a very cheap form or advertising.  The most popular social media platforms include Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter, LinkedIn, SlideShare and YouTube.

What Can Go Wrong with Social Media Marketing?

The main thing that can go wrong with social media is based entirely on what also makes social media so important and popular: its wide audience.  If you happened to make a mistake in the advertisement of your blog or website, this could potentially go viral as it is shared across the world.  Similarly, if you have any problems or mistakes on your websites, social media users will be very quick to share this.

One example of social media going wrong was when Honda released the new Honda Accord.  They created a Facebook page for the car that people could “like” to add to their profile and users were then asked to rate the car itself.  Within the first hour of the page going live, it gained over 10,000 fans.  However, over 80% of these fans voted to “kill it with fire” instead of actually appreciating the car.

Damage Control – How to Prevent Social Media Marketing Problems

Damage control with social media marketing should be quite easy.  Firstly, it is important to know the tools you are using as a website or blog owner.  A social media campaign could potentially go viral – meaning it reaches an uncontrollable number of users in a very short period of time – so it is important to make no mistakes in your advertisement that could potentially ridicule either your product or content.

Secondly, know how your chosen social media works and what its pros and cons are.  Lastly, remember that social media is used to share information and to promote.  Try, if at all possible, not to engage in any cold selling through social media.  Use it as a tool to promote and give out information to direct people to the website or blog.  From there, you can be more actively engaged in cold selling.

In this day and age, it is almost impossible to have a foot in the door of online business without being involved in social media.  It is an incredibly powerful tool, but it is important to remember to use it rightly so as not to cause any negative publicity.  However, a famous person did once say “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”, of course.