Every week we present you with an interesting topic, useful English vocabulary and idioms. This week our blog is all about social media.
The sector – die Branche – is relatively new but has rapidly grown over the last few years. And with that also came a new job, namely the social media expert. This is someone who is well versed – versiert, bewandert – in marketing through social media channels. Someone who monitors site metrics, responds to reader comments and oversees creative designs. They are responsible for creating and administering – verwalten – content on different social media platforms. Furthermore, social media is an important tool used to create brand awareness – Markenbekannheit – and to enhance a company´s name recogntion – der Bekannheitsgrad.
Advantages and Disadvantages of social media
- promoting a product or service – the whole worls is opento your business. This can help to quickly boost sales, and apart from advertisement it is very cost-effecive – rentabel.
- connecting – customers have a direct contact to your business to ask questions, request help with a product and receive news and updates about your business.
- insights – the use of social media allows business to keep up with audience reach – die Reichweite, growth statistics – Wachstumsstatistiken, top engaging locations and the active time customers spend on your website
- target audience – die Zielgruppe – you can maintain social media accounts on platforms that are most in line with your business and target audience.
- cyberbullying – it is important to interact with your customers and followers. But next to questions and constructive critcism people can also send threats and hate messages.
- hacking – outside people may be able to hack an account, private or business, and gain personal information. Identity theft – der Identitätsbetrug – also plays a role here. This can be detrimental – schädlich – for a business
- reputation – der Ruf – if a bad review is online it is very difficult to change the public´s opinion again. This can lead to a business suffering financial losses.
- time consuming – businesses need to invest a lot of time on regularly creating new content and updating the accounts on various platforms.
A challenge for businesses use of social media are raised customer expectations. They want immediacy – Unmittelbarkeit – and expect interesting new ideas to promote a product or a service. Businesses should be aware of these expectations. It is also important to have a plan for handling negative comments. And last but not least, social media experts need to make sure that the represent their company in a professional way.
