
Search is fragmenting – credibility and trust create the new visibility
Online search behaviour has changed significantly with the rise of AI. How can African brands adapt to this new marketing landscape?
SOCIAL MEDIA
By our News Team | 2022
The online world is full of avoidable social media blunders by businesses. Here are some of the common ones.
Depending on how you use it, social media can either make your business a digital marketing darling or an out-of-touch pariah to be mocked and avoided.
Writing in Entrepreneur magazine, Adam Petrilli, CEO and founder of US-based online reputation management company NetReputation.com, warns that self-inflicted online damage not only hurts an organisation’s social media efforts; it can do major reputational damage that dents brand integrity and revenue over the long run.
Photo by Fauxels from Pexels
He lists some of the biggest social media blunders. Among them:
Posting from the wrong perspective
Posting business updates from an individual’s point of view may seem harmless enough. But straying too far from your brand’s voice can create real audience disconnects that have lasting consequences for your brand, injecting a sense of personal feeling or bias that alienates users and ultimately undermines your messaging.
No matter your brand or industry, keeping your social media strategy on track means maintaining a consistent brand voice throughout, and ensuring your marketers are always posting from the company’s point of view and not their own.
Seizing on the wrong trends
Latching onto the wrong trends is one of the faster ways to bump your social media management off the rails. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common trend among businesses seeking a quick boost in visibility. It inevitably links brands to irrelevant memes or hashtags that leave followers and the public shaking their heads.
While every social media channel offers plenty of space to experiment and try something fresh, it’s important to understand what that latest trend is all about before doing anything rash.
Jumping into the wrong conversations
Involving your brand in the wrong conversation is a serious but preventable social media blunder that generates significant public blowback with lasting repercussions for your business. That’s because joining social chatter and discussions that aren’t aligned with your message or your purpose doesn’t only position you as out of touch; it can also quickly transform your brand into a social media laughing stock, hurting brand integrity and customer relationships in the process.
While there are certainly cases where joining the conversation can reinforce and even bolster your messaging, it’s critical to do your homework before diving in. Conversations that align with your brand, customers and culture are great, but be absolutely sure they do before chiming in.
Read the full article here.

Online search behaviour has changed significantly with the rise of AI. How can African brands adapt to this new marketing landscape?

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