A World That Swings in Roundabouts; Proactive or Reactive?

The world of IT can get a little confusing at times, having said that, so can everything else that comes with it for that matter. The Internet is great and all that, but, how much of it can you really be sure is ‘real’ and what is essentially, a sales pitch dressed up by way of informative blogs and ‘informative information’.

There’s a saying somewhere and, it goes a little something like this, ‘Everybody’s selling something, whether they are aware of it, or not. Looking at any information in that mindset will soon help you to become more ‘aware’ and increase your ability to sift through the pile of, what’s ‘real’ and what’s not.

Everybody’s selling something

Take social media as an example, here, we have online tech platforms made up of some 4.5 billion users worldwide, who are essentially selling themselves in one way or another. That’s over half the world’s population and which is no surprise really considering that these platforms are programmed to work on pretty much any device whether it be a mobile device, an Apple mac, Windows, or Linux based PC.

What’s even more shocking is that most people won’t have ever looked at the platforms as a sales platform in that way before, to them, it’s just one of many IT solutions to aid their communicative abilities. That is, of course, unless you are one of the billions of users who runs a business and actively uses a variety of social media platforms to promote and sell your products, in which case you should fully appreciate the power of what has been provided to you.

When asking, your average person who uses a personal account, the typical response is usually something like, ‘Oh, I just use it to keep in contact with my friends’. Or, it’s an easy place to store all of my photos. The truth of the matter is that, like most are, probably addicted to the feel-good fact and the dopamine hit produced by their brains when receiving a new like or comment, it’s a much deeper topic of mental health that your average user will be blind to.

Open the floodgates

It’s a fair response, and a good one at that, however, that doesn’t explain why the same people actively allow their accounts to be ‘public’, open to any internet user, who chooses to take a look at their profile. Nor does it explain why a lot of those users will have a page full of activity showing check-ins and photos of nearly every meal that they consume.

More often than not, those same profiles are taking a risk because, they offer information about where that person works, their relationship status and other personal information that, if asked by a stranger they’d probably get ‘weirded out’, one of the first thoughts being something like, ‘that’s none of your business pal’

On top of that, generally speaking, people only talk about or share what they want other people to see, so, even without realizing it nearly all of those people are promoting themselves or their lives in some form, or another. Usually and, especially, for the younger generations, you’ll find heavily filtered, pictures and photos, which aren’t, let’s face it, really real.

Is it really real?

The whole concept creates a ‘persona’ or, an image that, for most people simply isn’t a reflection of their ‘real life’. As a general rule of thumb, you only really see what people want to ‘show off’, it’s almost as if people’s ability to show off to their hearts content has been given a green light and had a couple of superchargers strapped to it.

It’s a really strange phenomenon actually, because, using ‘the news’ as ‘the’ example, how often is the news about good things that are happening? Not often, and why is that? Because people buy bad news, it’s been the same since the beginning of time, almost as if it’s human nature to be attracted to or, more easily influenced by bad news than that of good news. So, how can people be more influenced by ‘bad’ stuff yet be ‘programmed’ to only share all the good things that are happening within their lives yet are much more likely to share ‘bad’ news based on what they? That may well be a separate topic for another day.

Down to business

For those that use social media for Business purposes and SEO, it’s a dream come true! Never before has it been so easy to find out information about people that they want to sell to or, finding out who they should sell to and what they should be selling to different groups of people based upon the person’s lifestyle and personal interests. The ability to target particular groups of people based upon what they choose has been a complete game changer, in fact, these very features are what has enabled many businesses to continue trading whilst things like lockdowns and restrictions were enforced.

What’s the best approach, though, when it comes to promoting your business? You have the option to be as ‘reactive’, or as ‘proactive’ as you like. You have the choice of using paid ads for products and services, or simply promoting your business page. Alternatively, some businesses have successfully built a new customer base purely by using well placed relevant content on their business page that others can share, it’s a more ‘organic’ approach yet, you’ll need to be a really ‘eager beaver‘, it may take a little longer to build up the same amount of customers as opposed to using paid services.

Proactive or reactive?

The topic of whether to take a proactive, or reactive approach when it comes to managing your social media Business page keeps rearing its head almost as if people aren’t sure which route or approach is best. It should be a really straightforward decision to make really, and should absolutely be part of your ongoing business plan.

In order to make the most of what social media marketing has to offer, being both proactive and reactive are both really important aspects to master, they are both equally as important, for example, why would you spend a load of time on making and then implementing an Online campaign yet, not follow it up? Not only that, people will react differently based upon how they are advertised to.

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