My ethical stand to Value over Profit in social media
There has been something I have wanted to talk about for a while, a subject that may rustle a few feathers but I hope it gets people thinking. As a business we are here to make a profit but how we do it can define who we are. I believe that ethics is extremely important which is why when it comes to social media our main principle is to work towards value over profit.
Now let me make it clear, what we provide comes at a cost and we may be a little more expensive than many other companies that provide social media. But what we do is only accept business where we believe we can add value to a company.
When I started on social media, as many of you know, I had no idea what I was doing, it is only through listening, learning, experimenting and continuing this process over time have I become to understand that some things will not work. We have often been approached by estate agents who desire us to lower our social media offering for a lesser fee, my response is always the same – NO!
Why would I turn down legitimate business and provide what the potential client is seeking? There is one big reason – Value.
Let me explain, let’s take twitter, for example, we all know when you are viewing your timeline you see a snapshot of time. If you are not tagged into a post, you will miss everything that has been posted outside the timeframe you are looking at. When I jump onto twitter I may look through the last 15 minutes of live tweets, therefore, if you haven’t posted a tweet within this 15-minute window I will not see it.
Why does this matter?
Because if you want your content to reach your audience it needs to be seen.
This is why I get upset when I see some companies offering businesses social media products that will add no value to the business because they have dramatically reduced the probability of their tweets being seen. The other day I came across a company that was charging a monthly fee of £100 for 10 tweets and 10 Facebook posts a month, that’s 2.5 tweets a week. Even if you doubled that that’s still less that 1 tweet/post a day a week, what real value is this adding to your business?
Ethically, I find these social media packages wrong.
Social media is about creating relationships, if you are not visible and not engaging, how are you going to start to develop a relationship and establish trust.
If you do have the time to manage social media in-house I would always strongly advise this is the preferred option. You can always jump on a training course, or as I did, listen, learn and experiment. There is no quick magic wand to social media it does take time and work to get to know and understand your following.
If you do decide that you need to outsource your social media then please think about the package you choose, will it really add value to your business? You don’t want to be throwing your money away on something that will not have any impact.
“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we do it.” Erik Qualman
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