A recent survey has shown that less than half of marketers know how to handle unwanted attention.
According to the results of recent research conducted by eMarketer, over 88 percent of all businesses are using social media marketing as of this year, and yet the majority of them are still struggling to be able to properly use this channel and measure their campaign successes.
Moreover, almost half of those marketers don’t know how to handle negative posts.
According to Social Media Marketing University (SMMU) a training firm for the use of this channel, one in four marketers do not have a plan for handling negative posts against them, but they are trying to develop one. Nearly that many, again, have absolutely no plan for dealing with negative social media attention and have no intention of trying to create one.
That said, despite the lack of negative social media marketing plan, the majority will still respond.
SMMU’s stats showed that even though more than half of marketers don’t have a set strategy for dealing with negative posts in an effective way, the majority will respond to it. Moreover, many will create their response within an hour of the appearance of the negative post, in the first place. Another 52 percent said that they will respond within the first twenty four hours following the negative posting. Only five of all of the respondents to the survey said that they either hardly ever, or never, respond to negative attention over social media.
Among the respondents, Walmart was one that had previously taken a rather passive strategy when t comes to what its critics are posting over Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and so on. That said, it has since changed its tune. In the past, it simply used these channels as a fast, easy, and affordable way to help to create a push for its messages. However, this direction changed considerably last year as it began to provide rapid responses to negative posts, with a special effort to keep up positive posting and by providing information to correct misunderstandings.
This is a common evolution in social media marketing strategies as companies slowly begin to understand the way in which they can not only share their news but also interact and engage with consumers.
However, a study shows that there are more people who value it than are actually using it.
Recent research is indicating that female business owners are feeling quite optimistic, overall, about the way that their companies will be performing over the upcoming year, and that many of them feel that social media marketing could play a notable role in helping to enhance outcomes.
That said, a surprising number of women business owners are not using this technique, despite the value they assign it.
The research from the National Association of Women Business Owners and Web.com Group, Inc., showed that 89 percent of women feel that their business performance will be positive throughout this year. This is an increase of 8 percent over the figures that were registered last year when women business owners were asked the same question. Among those who participated in the survey, most said that social media marketing was important for building relationships with customers.
In fact, 85 percent of women business owners felt that social media marketing was important for this purpose.
However, at the same time that this vast majority expressed that they felt this way, only 67 percent of this same group said that they were currently using one of the social networks in order to connect with customers. At the same time, only slightly over half felt strong enough in their ability to build a presence over social media in order to achieve this goal. When all was said and done, only about one in every four female business owners are posting comments at least one time per day.
Among those that were posting over social media, the preferred site was also surprising. Although Facebook is by far the largest social network and it receives the highest amount of traffic, it was still used by only 21 percent of the respondents. LinkedIn had the top spot at 25 percent. This could suggest either that women prefer the latter network or it could also indicate that many of the survey participants were marketing business to business – for which LinkedIn would be the top choice.
This year could be a defining one for social media marketing, as the perception of its value continues to rise, but at a greater rate than its adoption among this demographic.
