Social Media’s Role in the Coronavirus Outbreak and How Businesses Should Learn from It

As a person who provides social media services, I am aware that despite so many users sign up for social media account every day, it doesn’t mean that they will be an active user as well. Many people use social media as a way to express themselves or maybe reunite with their high school friends or long-distance family. However, not everyone will go online every day unless they are a public figure, a social media influencer or a business entity. Yes, you read that right. Social media can be the best place for business to promote their products and interact or communicate with their customers. However, now that the world has been hit with the world pandemic – the coronavirus outbreak, some businesses were forced to either reduce their employees’ salary or just close their business. That being said, if they had kept going for a little longer, they would have endured this pandemic. Why? That’s because social media has a big role in this pandemic and if you own a business, you can actually make use of it to promote your brand. Well, there are good and bad in anything, but here’s what I’m going to tell you…

Social media and coronavirus: The Good!

Social media is one of the best ways to share news nowadays (it may be the only way for some people), especially if you are trying to alert people of something serious in a very, very quick manner. Whether it be coronavirus news from individual states or news on a national scope, social media gets the message where it needs to go. You’ve seen pretty much everything in terms of the coronavirus over the last few days to weeks. The number of people being affected by the illness in states, counties, and specific cities and towns come to mind. This news has made people aware of how the situation has been constantly deteriorating the sense of normalcy across the nation. Social media has also educated us about the symptoms of coronavirus – in turn, perhaps saving lives! Now, that’s not the only thing good about social media role for us during this pandemic. For business, it can be a good chance to get to know your social media followers because well, many people have time to be more engaged on social media than they ever did before. Some companies have their employees either work from home or take some leave request during this pandemic. Those who have social media but have nothing to do tend to spend more time on social media than when they were busy with work. At the same time, many people create beautiful creations such as Instagram templates and other stuff to do for social media content to keep people more engaged and also keep them from feeling bored. You should do the same so you won’t lose any customer and your business can keep going!

On the other hand, the bad side…

Well, I’m not going to lie, but every good side has a bad side, including this. To contrast the first point that I made in the section above, social media is great for spreading information and news, but some of that can be misinformation or “fake news.” Misinformation, especially about coronavirus, can cause panic. People who see misinformation on social media may think what they are reading is actually true. If it’s something as important or serious as a worldwide pandemic, you should do a little research to see if what you are reading is actually factual. Otherwise, you may be inclined to share the misinformation and fuel the fear of something that isn’t necessarily true.

Whether it is a business or a personal profile, you should refrain from posting anything that makes fun of, ridicules, or minimizes the situation. It could spell trouble for you, especially as a business. If you are going to post about coronavirus, be informative and make sure your followers know what’s happening with you, your business, or the situation overall.

7 Sins of Social Media for Business

Sins of Social Media for Business-01

Currently, social media has been a great transportation for any business that wants to drive their revenues by doing promotion online. In fact, most marketers, such as SEM professionals, and SEO engineers think that they know how to make it right, however, not every of them can do it flawlessly, instead, there are many online marketers which tend to repeat the same mistake again and again. This, of course will reduce the result of your social media promotion. To prevent it, you better read some of the mistakes to optimize your promotions.

Ignorance

Acting ignorance on social media such as not catering your posts to a wide variety of people, for instance by not following any important issues, such as Hollywood politics, religion and any controversial topics will not good for your online marketing strategies. Oppositely, it’s important to maintain your business and branding through social media with fresh and informative news.

Quantity over Quality

Today, there is service that offers you thousands of followers for your social media and so many people have been trapped in the statement that followers equal customers. In fact, if you are working on doing branding, that kind of service is not necessary. The amount of your followers is not important, so your goal is to win over people who would actually care about your brand.

Misuse

There are so many mistakes that people misuse to social media, such as posting inappropriate links, images or language. Do personal thoughts posting is also a big no, even though there are some social media which is used to share personal thought, but if you do business, personal thought is still unacceptable.

As social media is where people share their opinions, so when they share their bad opinions about your company, do not misuse this situation, instead of giving bad or rude response, sincerely admit the scarcity and treat them back with satisfaction.

Overuse

Posting contents too often will disturb your audience. This is why prioritizing the quality of your content above your quantity is important as posting too frequently reduces the effect of each post and more likely encourage engagement. In fact, this engagement will not only drive traffic to your company, but also to your website, which adds your business income and opportunities.

Not Enough Engagement

As information flows swiftly today, users are constantly bombarded with content, so it is your job to keep them engaged. To make them truly engaging with your content, do a post regularly and target them via newsletter, app, and Facebook. Furthermore, if you need to talk about something they care and interesting about to get the potential of social media marketing.

Negativity

Do not spread negative information or news as there is no place for negativity on social media. Besides you want consumers to have positive associations toward your business. Moreover, talking unimportant issues will make your business looks undervalue.

Spammy Spam

Do not give unsolicited emails to your potential buyers continuously as that will affect nothing unless annoy and drive users away. There are other resources out there that can help you with many programs to avoid spam.

What Facebook Has Planned for the Next Three Years

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It seems that everyone these days knows Facebook, with billions of users Facebook still becomes social media services leader among others popular social media, such as, Instagram, Twitter, QQ and etc which also gain so many popularity. However, after so many years of success, Facebook keep exploring it features to be on top among its counterparts, as new social media always occurs with different features and function. This is why Facebook need to arrange another good strategy for the future of Facebook and here are what Facebook has planned for the next three years ahead.

  • Turning Its Popular Apps into Profits

These days, Facebook Company has widened its technology communication business into so many popular apps, such as WhatsApp, Mesenger and Instagram. With millions of users in every launched app, Facebook is challenged to think about how to get more profits from those popular chat apps such as WhatsApp and Messenger which can similarly make money from their devoted user as these two kinds of app have become more attractive since they provide with voice calling, taking on the mobile carriers.

  • Oculus

Next year, is where Facebook will launch its inaugural headset. What people want to know is how quick this oculus project can pays off its $2 billion acquisition of the company. Moreover, Oculus success will not only value from how many headset it can sell, but also from its platform, such as, how far its platform can win developers heart rather than its rival, Sony’s Morpheus. In fact, people expect to see more than just video games that will be provided in Oculus, varies platforms, such as entertainment content and communication platform, will be next Facebook’s challenge on Oculus.

  • Advertising Revenue

In the next, video ads and “instant article” which the company’s just launched system of embedding other publisher’s articles on the site along with ads will become some ways out for growing advertising revenue. Moreover, Facebook also considers on putting an ad exchange, to enable Facebook to automate the sales process of other publishers’ ads.

  • Expanding Internet Access

Because of massive penetration of Facebook, with 1.44 billion monthly active users, Facebook constantly experiences reduction. Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg has invested his vision for expanding Internet access to the rest of the world, with drones and satellites, among the things. Although this kind of investment may take long term for fruition market of Facebook, but Zuckerberg considers the long wait of investment is worth it.