Social media communication barriers: how to overcome them

Whether you’re sending a message to your friends or marketing a product or service to customers, social media is an everyday tool to communicate, network and market to an audience.

However for accountants who may not have the skills to use social media; it can be a setback when communicating knowledge and expertise to clients.

It is important to identify barriers preventing your business from reaching to the right people. In this post we look at ways to overcome them to benefit your business.

What is social media?

Before identifying the barriers we must first understand what social media is. There are 2 parts:

• social – interacting and sharing information with people
• media – tool or instrument of communication e.g. website or newsletter

Combining these 2 points, social media is an online based tool that enables people to interact and share information among others.

Barriers

Although there are pros to using social media for accountants, such as networking and securing valuable information, the challenges faced often outweigh the benefits.

Some of these barriers include:

• lack of knowledge
• timing
• unsure what to write about
• compliance concerns
• lack of control over what happens
• Age

As of January 2022, the number of active social media users passed the 4.62 billion users. This figure has grown by 490 million over the past 12 months, delivering year-on-year growth of more than 13 percent. To put that into context, that’s more than 53% of the world’s total population.

It really pays to get on-board with social media for your firm, but you need to be looking at the right channels as to where your ideal clients frequent. Concentrating on one or two good channels  rather than spreading yourself too thinly across multiple channels where you can not have impact is the best way to start off your social media journey.

Overcoming challenges

With more firms looking to engage with their clients through social nedia there are ways to overcome the barriers.

Accountants are too busy with day-to- day work and learning a new skill often takes time. However there are reasons for your practice to make time for it.

Here are some suggestions to help you make use of social media:

• time allocation – making time in your working schedule, it could be for an hour a day
• team support – utilising your team members to control the task at hand
• outsourcing – hiring consultants and experts can help you understand how social media works for your business