How Small Businesses Can Go Beyond Branding Failure and Social Media Fear

No matter how ubiquitous the use of social media is and how entities like Forbes encourage its adaptation and use in business, it cannot be denied that many organizations are still fearful about the whole social shebang. The reluctance lies on the leaders and managers of these companies. According to the current Social Readiness Assessment by Gartner, business leaders are divided between the social media ready and the social media challenged. This attitude spreads to small business owners and managers too.

Note: Clicking the link above will take you to the assessment to find out if you’re social ready or getting there.

The assessment categorizes 6 attitudes leaders take towards social – Fusing, Forging, Formulating (being the three positive attitudes), Flippant, Fearful, and Folly (being the three negative attitudes). Executives and managers don’t consider social media as folly with only 1% responding it to be so, however, 35% of them feel fearful towards social media.

So Many Examples Of Fail That Leaders Are Threatened

Business executives and managers don’t want to be like the brands that failed big-time in social media and became a worldwide, internet laughstock. They’d rather embrace being a wallflower than risk a marketing misstep in the form of a social media error and lay that failure bare for the whole internet to see. They feel it would be very difficult to recover their brand image and reputation after that.

Their minds are littered with so many real-life instances of huge brands having social media “fail” moments that it masks the positive role of social media in marketing and brand building. Most organization heads still view social media as a threat – a threat to employee productivity, company security, privacy, management authority, and/or regulatory compliance.

The Danger in Fear

The feeling of being fearful towards social media, of being threatened by it, brings a particular trouble to many organizations and businesses big and small. More often than not, companies that take a fearful attitude towards social media don’t take a specific stance – they brush off the marketing strategy or set it aside while they’re yet to make up their minds while discouraging and going to great lengths as prohibiting its use by employees in the office.

Now while this approach greatly reduces the chances of leaks and undesirable behavior, it also hugely mutes any business value obtained from engaging in social media.

What Social Media Marketing Really Is

The willingness of small businesses to forego the positive results of social media in branding and marketing, their fearful reluctance to adapt social media strategies in marketing can be overcome by getting back on track and putting on a clearer head on the issue.

A lot of the confusion that ultimately leads to fear stems from the concept that social media is advertising. While that may be true, it holds a very small part in the whole bucket. Social media is first and foremost PUBLIC RELATIONS.

The power that drives a social media marketing strategy and/or tactic is the people. Without understanding people, any social strategy adapted by any company is deemed to fail. Getting Twitter followers, Facebook fans, YouTube views and other social communities is just half the story. The other half is the most essential part and that is, connecting with these people.