To engage in “The Information age” is a challenge. Many lessons learned during the time of Faxes don’t make sense anymore. One of the greatest difficulties entrepreneurs face is to create social media placement to help them with the image of their company.
If you are a fan of action films, you are probably familiar with a scene where a police officer is trying to disarm a bomb and there are two cables, a blue one and a red one. This illustrates quite vividly the situation of many brands regarding the Internet.
A good strategy is the same as disarming a bomb; everyone is happy with the outcome and commemorates a victory. But if the social media placement is not ideal, this equals to an explosion and your brand becomes the main victim.
Being on the Internet means to be exposed
In theory, social networks were created to offer people the opportunity to stay in contact with family and friends, just like the phone revolution, for example.
The reality is something completely different. For the first time in history, ordinary people can create content and publish it. Something that was only possible, in the past, if their job had something to do with communication.
All of a sudden we think that the Internet is a complex world displaying different thoughts. On the one hand, if millions of people paint their photographs with the colors of the rainbow to stand for same gender marriages in the United States, we are also exposed to hateful speech.
Millions of people are sensitive to the terrorist attacks in France and at the same time another million people criticize the lack of mobilization for the environment disaster in Mariana (MG).
The first step is to be aware of these polarizations to understand social media placement.
“The North Remembers”
If you are a fan of “Game Of Thrones” you know what this title means, but if you have no idea what this is about, don’t worry. We are basically saying that people remember what happened.
This is a topic that you must pay attention to. There is nothing like going back to something that was said on social networks. Even if you eliminate a post, you run the risk of “someone catching” your mistake.
Let’s take a look at two practical cases to understand the situation. The YouTube channel ¨Você sabia¨ has 7 million subscribers. Internet is the work platform for the creators and that leads us to believe that they have the correct social media placement, right? Mistake.
After a story by the daily Folha de Sao Paulo revealed that ¨YouTubers¨ received R$60 thousand from the government to support the educational reform, Internet users decided to look for past publications by its creators. They found racist, chauvinistic and homophobic texts.
Instead of using social media to deal with the image crisis caused by the Folha report, ¨YouTubers¨ created another account.
Even if people earn (a lot) of money with social media – don’t forget that YouTube is a social network – they make serious mistakes with their Internet image placement and that makes us think about what precautions to use.
Don’t worry we are going to show you how to solve this. 
How to position your brand on social media
1. You don’t need to have accounts on all the networks
Some entrepreneurs are eager to create accounts for their companies on all social networks and that is a serious mistake. Once your company has social media presence, you are expected to publish content there.
Your clients won’t follow you if your company doesn’t publish correctly and with certain frequency. What many entrepreneurs don’t tell you is that managing social networks requires a lot of work. So, instead of managing several accounts poorly, it’s better to maintain a digital presence in a few networks so you can manage them properly.
2. Know which networks are used by your target audience
Another common mistake. If your company’s target audience are kids, is it necessary to spend money on a commercial and run it during Globo News? It may sound like a terrible idea, right? It is. Therefore many companies are not able to see their mistakes when they contract their social media.
Today we know that the youngest audience is on Snapchat and Instagram. Knowing this data helps the company think about strategies in order to communicate with their target audience so their investment can bring them results.
3. Don’t underestimate the social media niche
There are social networks for a specific audience, such as the LGBT community, for example. During President’s Barack Obama term in office, his team kept an account on social media for a Latin audience.
Even if these networks don’t have the same visibility than Facebook, your company shouldn’t ignore them since they provide a narrower dialogue with the audience.
4. Establish an objective for your digital presence
Some companies maintain their social media accounts with the objective to serve their clients and answer questions, for example. Others decide to return to their more recognized brand. When you have a goal for social media placement, the company is on the right path because it already decided what professionally is behind the screen.
This decision is very important. If the possibility and need exist, it’s essential that the company hire professionals who interact with the audience.
5. Accept your mistakes
If your company makes a mistake one day, it´s important that you are held responsible and apologize. This type of attitude can help and even prevent a complicated situation.
Recently, the daily from Rio de Janeiro – Extra taught a lesson on how to deal with uncomfortable situations. The printed edition of the newspaper printed a typographical error. Instead of informing the reader about “cielo nublado” (cloudy skies), the Carioca publication omitted the letter “e” in “cielo nublado” from the word “Ceu” raising jokes on social media. Let’s just say that “céu” without the “e”, in Portuguese, can be quite embarrassing.
The company’s answer was quite amusing: “It was so cloudy in the Extra press room that no one was able to see the mistake. Please forgive us. In other words, the joke served to alleviate our embarrassment. Everyone knows that whoever has interns can have a slip, but the mistake was not his. ¨
Simple and to the point. The daily preferred to laugh with the readers.
6. Offer content to your followers
Internet users are not going to follow your company if it doesn’t offer interesting content on social media. They already know your product, so take advantage of this and offer instructions for use, answer questions or ask for comments.
Don´t become a narcissistic company that only talks about itself.
Why it’s important to position oneself?
First, because people want to know what brands think about topics of discussion in our society.
When the Globo Network decides to create a campaign against sexual abuse, or when O Boticário takes a stand for the gay community, or when Avon claims that women can be beautiful even if they don’t follow a beauty regime, this is important because these discussions are prevalent, companies barely participate in them and this brings brands closer to consumers. This generates engagement, and that is what companies are after on social media. One million followers don’t amount to anything if they don’t interact with your brand.
On the other hand, it’s important that this happens naturally. Choosing a position on social media is something that can scare consumers, as well as any other strategy, so it’s important that this is studied.
Another advantage about positioning is to be able to speak with consumers directly without the use of radio, TV, dailies, and magazines.
Contact is direct, and the experience is positive since it offers the company data and it’s much better for the economy of the business.
If your company is not yet ready to have a digital presence, don’t worry. It’s better to spend time studying the target audience and understand your brand better and take advantage of this opportunity, so you can have a more consistent stance, aligned with the company’s objectives.
A correct presence on social media creates Marketing opportunities such as Guerrilla Marketing campaigns that offer more visibility for your business as you invest less than in other types of actions.
A recommendation for those who are starting out is to follow the pages of large corporations and try to understand how they use social media.
Now that you know about social media presence, how about if you continue learning?
The Internet offers many opportunities for those who wish to embark on this and one of them is infoproducts, these are products created exclusively for the digital arena. If you still don’t know what this is about, be careful. Your business could be missing out on an optimal opportunity.
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About the author.
This article was produced by the Saia do Lugar team.