A promise is still a promise online.

Lately I have been reading a lot about how social media outreach can hurt as much as it can benefit a person or a company. I might have been more drawn to the articles as I personally have been thinking a lot about how I am defining my online presence.

What is personal online strategy and what I want to achieve with my online presence? What is the promise I am going to give the community I will build up, and how am I going to manage to keep that promise?

Although I might be more conscious about these articles than other, I think that the questions is becoming more essential as more amateur players are trying their luck in the social media sphere.

For a long time we have been stumbling upon crappy Websites that is neither nice to look at nor user friendly. Usually we turn at the doorstep with these Websites and find another sources for what we are looking at. Mostly the amateur Websites are products of microbusinesses, who have heard that they need a Website but don’t really bother to make sure that the site is generating any business.

However, I don’t think that this is the demographics that people are afraid will hurt their reputation by using social media. I think it is the next people on the ladder. Those with functional good looking Website that is basic but is generating business. I think that these guys are starting to learn about social media and will eventually start using in, but might not succeed as social media marketing can be quite time consuming until you learn the tricks.

So what about the hurting part? How can it actually hurt my business?

I do not have all the answers to these questions and I think some of the answers will be determined in time. But for now, one of the thing you have to be aware of is that social media participation ranks well on Google, while a normal Website might get hidden in social media results. So if your company is on Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn that might give your assigned Website number 4 in the ranking, so you better make good use out of the other three. (I would know, my blog is currently number 7 I think)

Besides from the possible bad ranking on Google social media presence can also misrepresent your company. People is annoyed by everything from grammatical errors to an unresponded tweet online and that might hurt your reputation. People might not remember tell their friends on their coffee break but they might say something about their disappointment online. And this is only one other way that your company reputation might get hurt from social media marketing, feel free to add more ways in the comment section.

As I am very much for social media presence I just want to remind people that:
even though your reputation might get hurt from bad use of social media the consequences might be even worse from no use of social media.