Social Media Marketing for your business: Pros and Cons

Social media, probably the fastest means of marketing has come a long way. Considering today’s business landscape, social media is indispensable from traditional marketing strategies. Good and bad, social media plays a significant impact in building a brand with its audience.
No business can realize its full potential unless the social factor of your brand is hailed on social media. However, consider the following pros and cons prior to adopting social media for your business.
Pros
1. Increase reach of customers
2. Directly engage with your audience- build network and connect with people.
3. With targeted marketing you can reach out to accurate audience.
4. You can understand customer behavior, learn and explore market demands and know more about requirements etc.
5. Cost effective- cheaper as compared to other means of marketing.
6. Easy means to drive traffic to website
7. Give your brand a definitive voice- You can give a character to your brand by the way you communicate with your fans.
8. Manage crisis better-by identifying and responding issues at the earliest.
9. Real time reach with audience- Engage with your audience in real time.
10. Business potential in previously unexplored areas
11. Compliment and multiply other marketing strategies with social media
Cons
1. Requires dedication in terms of time and effort- Social media is not a one day gamble, it requires time to build an online community and develop the trust with fans.
2. High creativity all the time- One requires a lot of creativity and constancy in order to come up with quality content and campaigns.
3. Loopholes exposed- Just as goodwill spreads fast, the changes for negative fire spread is also very high.
4. Defining ROI is very difficult, more so because you cannot measure or predict it instantly.
5. If not monitored well, social media can be difficult to manage- You need a powerful social media listening tool to be able to filter out relevant data for you.