THE DELICATE WORLD OF ONLINE BUSINESS MARKETING

By Namakando Nalikando-Sinyama This is not by any means a detailed manual for academic instruction on the subject matter but simply an opinion gleaned from my not so pleasant experiences surfing the worldwide web. Is there someone these online business advertisers have entrusted with the responsibility of attending to online enquiries in real time on their social media pages like Face Book? I would like to believe this ought to have been one of the reasons you established these pages for business purposes and improved Customer Service through online information dispensation and interaction. We really need some form of feedback and responses to our queries otherwise; it becomes increasingly pointless to have these online pages on social media if you are never answering our questions. You can therefore appreciate just how frustrating it gets when you need information fast on which you need to base your all-important money involving business decision on what to purchase, how much it will cost and where to get it from. If these organisations do not provide this kind of personalised and dedicated online service, there is a different innovation that you might need to consider using as opposed to clustering social media with your inactive pages just because you feel it is trendy. It might prove to be your undoing as it is quite bad for business in the long run when customers are not attended to help them resolve their pressing issues. They may decide to completely tick you off as being unconcerned, highly unprofessional, even a touchy rude due to your prolonged silence. Inasmuch as, it is perfectly understandable how Face Book currently offers the easiest way to reach a wider group of people because it is free, you need to critically analyse the possible pros and cons of its use. We have seen how others have instead opted for some form of automated responses to FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) on their websites. The most proactive and truly Customer Centred Businesses have gone one up by actually having employees devoted to for this purpose of actively engaging online potential customers in 24 hour lively chats about their products and services in open online Question and Answer sessions. These have in the end proven to be more effective for this purpose, as they are more informative and by far offer a more personalised and interactive interface with online clientele. Some are way too pushy though; they have turned aggressive marketing into an art form to the point where you feel your god given right to some form of personal privacy and piece of quiet is being infringed upon with impunity in the most intrusive of ways. It does get too much in certain instances that, depending on where they are based and the geographical divide they even follow it up with actual phone calls at the most inconvenient of times. Without giving away a lot of detail on this aspect that is! Wink There has recently been a feature introduced where when you visit a page peddling whatever product ,you create or tag yourself with what I can only christen an Online Heat Signature. The advertisers will from that point onwards track and seek you out by monitoring your every activity online and treat you to an endless and persistent barrage of pop-ups showing the very item you just had a casual glance on without any serious intention of buying. If you have ever viewed a motor vehicle on Sierra Bravo Tango, a company from Nippon (Nihon) even in passing only, then you have a fair enough idea of what I am on about exactly. Your form must have rang off the hook! I really do not even yet understand just how the many home start-ups attempting to cash in on the seemingly free advertising medium presented by face book eventually benefits Mr.Mark Zuckerberg. For some reason, I actually seem to remember how when one was being configured for an account, there was a prohibition against engaging in any form of advertising on most of these vibrant social media platforms. To my utter amazement however, there has been a healthy proliferation of unchecked ads promoting everything from used household goods, Persian carpets and rugs from Kashmir, to some really private paraphernalia like Manhood Enlargement creams and believe it or not, sleazy personal dating pages informing us of escort services of sorts by adventurous socially liberal college girls who have chosen to embrace a life of Libertines. After having said all this, it must mentioned that, social media advertising/marketing does indeed have its place when properly managed. It presents a very real and beneficial tool especially for budding entrepreneurs for reaching out to a widest number of potential buyers of their goods and services. This must be achieved after a realistic assessment of any possible legal infractions so that these are avoided at all costs.