Do you feel that you are spending more and more time on social media, be it in your working or home life? Well you probably are! The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) recently announced that one in seven minutes spent online are social, that is 12% of all time spent browsing the web.

The report also highlighted that British consumers average 43 hours a month online – 1 in every 12 waking minutes. This is a huge amount of time and businesses are obviously keen to capitalise on this audience. Advertisers spent a record six-month figure of £3.04 billion to attract their attention, according to the latest IAB UK Digital Adspend report.

However social media platforms are much more than advertising opportunities. Businesses must first see them as engagement platforms and an extension of marketing messaging, not just an opportunity to sell their product. They are so much more than that! With so much of web users’ time being allocated to social media platforms, businesses aimed at both B2C and B2B audiences must take their social media seriously. Utilised correctly, social media is a direct method of communication to customers and has great value and potential reach.

As social media is a representation of a business, great care must be taken to ensure that all posts fully reflect the company ethos and strengthen business image, rather than damage it. The internet is full of #epicfail moments where people have got it very wrong, such as the hashtag used for Susan Boyles album promotion.

When dabbling in social media make sure that you know what you are doing; elect or employ a social savvy person to manage the company’s social media to ensure continuity of business messaging or work with an outsourced provider to do this on your behalf. Either way #epicfails must be prevented. After all, a bad social media presence is more detrimental to business image than a non-existent social profile.

 

By Shelley Martin, Account Manager at Neo PR.

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