According to a recent Global Digital Report, more than 3 billion people around the world now use social media, which is a 13% increase year-on-year. The popularity of social media has expanded beyond personal use, with businesses using the platforms as a cost-effective solution to their advertising requirements.
There are a lot of articles which detail why you should implement social media marketing as part of your overall strategy for your business. However, there are also negative implications to utilising social media for your website which you should be wary of.
Social media channels are very effective for presenting a consistent brand image to the consumer, but when your channels differ to your website this can be damaging to your website performance.
For example, if consumers are engaged with your social media content and look to your website for more information, the inconsistency in the brand image could navigate users away from your site, increasing the bounce rate. Therefore, if your business information isn’t presented on a single webpage, you are losing out on potential customers.
Furthermore, having social media channels for your business is a great foundation for creating backlinks to your website. The more backlinks your website has, the more important and popular Google believes it to be.
As a result, backlinks are very influential in improving your Google ranking and search visibility. However, if the backlinks you are creating on social media are deemed as low-quality by Google, this will negatively impact the performance of your website in the search rankings. You can find an article we have discussed previously on how important backlinks are here.
Additionally, how you use social media for your business is a decisive factor on whether it will help or hinder your website. A major benefit of social media is how it can be used to handle customer service enquiries regarding your business.
However, delivering poor customer service on social media platforms can have a very negative impact on the customer journey. For many consumers, social media is one of the first places they visit when checking out a business. Therefore, if you deliver poor customer service on your social media platforms, this could deter potential customers away from your business and away from looking for more information on your website.
Therefore, if you are implementing social media marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy, you must understand how to effectively use social media to prevent it from damaging your business.
Updated 3/12/2020
