Social Media: A Blessing and a Curse.

Staff Writer

SOCIAL media. It can be as great a blessing as a curse.

It can make your day with the ease of receiving praise for your business or a job well done, but the bad stuff can keep you awake at night, gnawing into your good sense and reasoning.

Undeniably, if there is one tool which has revolutionized the way we do business even beyond that which was apparent with the advent of online it’s the social media platform.

It set the concept of word of mouth on a curve of exponential growth, and brought about a whole new need for moderation, feedback and direct customer interface.

Yet, all in a kind of indirect way.

Confusing, much? Indeed.

All of a sudden we see small Mum and Dad businesses who in many cases are just going about things in their own way, just doing what they do and not necessarily interested in high-level growth or like finding themselves at the centre of stormy feedback rants on Facebook.

Likewise , though seemingly not quite as often, it is a great platform for positive notes, thanks and gratitude.

As with anything, you take the good with the bad; The genuine with the misinformed.

And think it though we may, there were plenty of trolls who thought themselves experts long before social media happened upon us.

It’s just that now, they have a louder, shriller voice.

Undoubtedly, as a promotional vehicle it’s brilliant.

Play the game safely and within the parameters of Facebook’s commercial bounds, and be careful not to inundate or saturate your audience with so much promotion and self-indulgence that it becomes white noise, and you’ll have a captive and engaged audience.

But whatever your social preference, all the promotion, suggested posts, sponsored posts and recommended pages aside, social media is just that.

It’s often untested. There are few measures of accuracy or credibility. And only loose rules of engagement stand between you (or your business) and a wave of bad publicity.

And in so many ways, when it comes to construction of your overall media and marketing mix, there are some things the old school ways will always do best.

 

Meredith Papas

For the past 20 years Meredith Papas has been a newspaper editor for a number of years, most recently for Mackay’s Daily Mercury, which included regular appearances on commercial radio.

She now operates iScribe Consulting in Queensland, working with clients on presenting everything from professional bios, to business capability statements; CVs to business cases; funding submissions to content. You can visit the iScribe website or their Facebook page.

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