To go social, or not to go social?

Ever since the rapid adoption of social media in a personal scope, businesses have been in a frenzy trying to jump onto the social media bandwagon. My personal opinion is to only establish a social media presence if the company has sufficient manpower, content, and a strong enough reason to even be on social media.

At Type A/shopthemag, I used to manage all the social media platforms - Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. I found it really time-consuming and tough juggling social media management and monitoring, with the other PR work that needs to be done.

I used to follow a strict daily posting schedule with different days of the week dedicated to certain themes. That proved pretty successful at first, and brought in more than couple of likes and shares per post everyday. I also conducted contests that were in collaboration with various publications, for example ELLE Singapore. The contests kept many eyeballs not only on our Facebook page, but the actual retail site, and was well-received.

Cutting through the noise, grabbing and retaining your target audience's attention everyday proved really challenging. Gradually, due to various projects that needed my attention, I found it difficult to post interesting content on all the social media platforms everyday. This resulted with a really stagnant page on Facebook with a drastic drop of views (you can view the statistics on a business account). I have since passed the management of social media platforms to a colleague, so that I can focus on other work.

The lesson? Consistency and content are key to building and retaining a social media platform. Do not be too hasty to leap into the scene without a long-term sustainable plan.