Show me where I said I open my facebook page for the first time at 11pm. I respond to messages via twitter/facebook all day long, be it at 9:30am or 11pm (if it’s appropriate (responding late at night is a topic I’ve been meaning to start)). I do still do other work at 11pm though. That’s when I can do work on my website, which may involve polishing my twitter page or making sure my facebook page integrates well with my website. That’s all part of it.
Besides, I’m up well past 11pm anyways, that’s just usually when I turn my TV off and find something else to do. If something on my website/facebook/twitter page needs work, that’s a good time to do it since people aren’t looking at it and I don’t get calls asking why something disappeared just as they were trying to click on it.
jackdavinci said: “Yes, you should have a basic website, a Facebook page, and a twitter account. I wouldn’t bother with anything else unless the business is specifically creative in nature.”
I agree with this. As an older customer social media play no role in my selection of vendor or product, but a useful internet web site is crucial to help me with those decisions. Social media only play a role in increasing the exposure the company or product might make to me. Any business/producer/product needs to have its name out there.
You might not have said “I open my FB page for the first time at 11pm…” (your example wasn’t about you, was it?), but a pizza place owner… is he/should he be checking FB during the lunch rush? During afternoon cleanup? During cashier change-out? While making EOD bank deposits? When are they going to get the time to actually engage their customers on FB/Twitter other than the period where they are not engaged in the actual running of their business?
Own a small clothing boutique, and you’re on your phone engaging with your Twitter feed… what does that look like to the customers already in the store? Are they thinking “Wow, this lady knows her marketing!” or are they thinking “WTF is she doing ignoring me while goofing off on Twitter?” My bets are on the “put down the damn phone” line of thinking…
The point of Social Media marketing is engagement. Just having a site on FB doesn’t do it, you have to constantly use and update it. Here’s a pizza place that I frequent. What good is their SMM doing them when the first thing a person reads is “Yeah, so you guys make shit pizza.”? They are doing this all wrong and if they are going to ignore their FB page, they should just kill it. Their sister location does a better job at it, but most of their FB posts are of the “call us now for pizza” variety with nothing to make people want to visit their FB page - no FB coupons, no “the fifth person to reply to this post gets a free cheese bread” contests, nothing.
So I’m not seeing much ROI opportunity for either of these restaurants (and they are quite popular here in SA), and most small businesses treat SMM the same way - as something to do in their spare time.
Lastly, how many people want to go to FB or Twitter to be marketed to?
You’re right, I didn’t say it.
I run a business, I work a shit load of hours, I respond to tweets and facebook posts throughout the day. Also, for the record, responding to these things, for a small business like mine, takes about 5 minutes a day. My phone (in my pocket) beeps, I look at it, it says someone commented on my facebook page or sent me a tweet and the next time I’m near my computer I say “Hey, thanks for the compliment, I’m glad you like our store” or I “like” their comment or retweet what they said. It’s not that this is a full time job in and of itself. Just something to keep the page active and make sure people are looking at it.
I do agree that if you aren’t going to keep up with your social media, you’re better off not using it in the first place. It looks worse to abandon your social media accounts than to not have them at all.
If you DO have a Facebook/Twitter account, use it well.
I recently was in the market for an item from a place that had a Facebook page. The first post on the day I looked had been posted an hour previously, from the company, saying “Here’s a coupon code for 25% off!”
“Great!” think, “I was going to buy this thing anyway, if I get it from this place I’ll get 25% off!”
I tried to place the order through their website, and I couldn’t get the coupon code to work. I responded to the Facebook message and asked politely what the problem might be.
Went back 3 hours later to check. My post had been deleted, and no answer given.
Social media is scalable. If you don’t have the time or inclination to be constantly engaging, it’s worthwhile and also practically required to have it simply as a directory listing, with your address, phone, website link, and lists of services or menu or whatever. And for businesses that don’t have a lot of “news” associated with them, really that’s all that’s necessary. For businesses that need to get get new info to their customers, like specials and schedule changes, that’s info that you have to spend time disseminating anyway - there’s not any extra effort involved in copy pasting it to your Facebook page.
As with anything, depending on your context, there’s a variable ROI. There might not be any point, in fact usually isn’t any point unless you already are large enough to have a dedicated public relations person, to trying to make your website or social media page a hotspot of back and forth interaction. But there is a point to synchronizing whatever you are doing elsewhere with your social media and internet interface. I actually think public interactive engagement is the least useful feature of social media for businesses.
And it also provides priceless feedback. Most people won’t bother to write a letter or call about a minor question or irritation but they will twitter or Facebook message. This gives you invaluable information about how to market your business, improve it, and what services your customers are looking for.
Facebook has controls - if you find that eliciting customer feedback is more trouble than its worth, you can not allow linkers to post. They can still message you directly, but other people wont see it. It can be a one way vector. Twitter is effectively one way just by its nature. And there are websites such as Yelp where it goes the other way - the customer can complain without you having set up a page at all, and not getting involved in the first place doesn’t prevent troublemaking.