For businesses, social media has created how to send a brand’s messaging to the right people at the right time and hope your brand stands proud to them enough to have an interest, including loyalty throughout their lives. –Social media benefits
However, not all businesses are aware of the benefits of social media marketing. In fact, 50% of small businesses aren’t using social media to promote their business. That’s an alarming number. Even more concerning is that an additional 25% don’t plan to use social media in the future either.
Clearly, there is a disconnect between those who are seeing the benefits of social media and those struggling to get started.
There are tons of advantages to be had from using social media.
If you’re not taking advantage of social, you’re missing out on a fast, inexpensive, and effective way to reach almost half the world’s population.
Here are the top twelve reasons why it’s imperative for businesses to get on social media, and the way it can help ensure your brand’s success.
1. Increase brand awareness
With nearly half of the world’s population using social media platforms, they’re a natural place to reach new and highly targeted potential customers.
During a business’s branding journey across social media, you’re able to talk about what’s important to the brand and its customers. Tell your brand’s story; build the legend as what it’s worth to the people who have devoted their lives to building it.
You can show off your brand culture and personality, stand out among the rest for the traits that make your brand different, and attract new, quality employees and further improve your business even more.
2. Boost Visibility
With paid ads/advertisements you are able to reach to as many as people you want and also you can target your audience with their interests.
Furthermore, it gets your audience looking at your brand even when they aren’t thinking about your brand or product.
3. Increase Website Traffic
Social media can assist in sending customers directly to your site.
It’s unlikely that all of your traffic will come through search engines. Social media channels allow for more diverse inbound traffic streams.
Sharing great content from your blog or website to your social channels is a great way to get readers as soon as you publish a new post.
4. Generate Leads
Social media offers a simple and low-commitment way for potential customers to have precise interest in your business and your products. Lead generation is such a crucial Social media benefits for business that a lot of social networks offer advertising formats specifically designed to gather leads.
For example, Renault Europe used Facebook lead ads that allowed people curious about learning more about a few new models to book a test drive directly from Facebook, with just a few taps.
5. Boost Sales
No matter what you sell, social media can assist you to sell it. Your social accounts are a critical part of your sales funnel—the process through which a replacement contact becomes a customer.
As the number of individuals using social media continues to grow and social sales tools evolve, social networks will become increasingly important for product search and eCommerce. The time is right to align your social media marketing and sales goals.
6. Track Your Competitors
Social media channels also allow us to stay our finger on the heartbeat of not just other marketing tactics and practices, but also the tactics utilized by direct competitors.
Our competitors are planning to do similar things as us (establish and protect brand reputation and ultimately sell its products/services), so it’s worth us monitoring and finding out ways our business can do better to teach and entertain users, as well as the things our brand does well, and ways we are able to improve across the board.
The ultimate goal is to have the customer understand us and depend on us for our authoritative approach within our niche over our competition.
7. Partner with Influencers
Word of mouth drives 20 to 50 percent of buying decisions. Once you get people talking about your product or company on social media, you build brand awareness and credibility and set yourself up for more sales.
One key way to drive social word of mouth is to partner with influencers—people who are popular on social media and can draw the attention of their followers to your brand.
8. Go Viral
As people start liking, commenting on, and sharing your social posts, your content is exposed to new audiences—their friends and followers. Going viral takes this idea one step further. As people share your content with their networks, and their networks imitate, your content spreads across the web, getting thousands or maybe many shares.
Virality will come with good content and good promotion.
9. Quick Communication
Depending on the industry and the grievance, challenges may still remain, but the road of communication that was somewhat challenging to establish is no longer nearly as difficult to do so.
It’s faster now than ever before to contact the right people — and oftentimes without having to even pick up a phone — and it’s only becoming easier as more people and brands use social media platforms to stay in touch with the people who matter most to their business.
10. Customer and Audience Engagement
Social networks offer you the chance to interact directly with customers and fans, and likewise give them the prospect to interact directly with your brand. Unlike traditional media, which offers only one-way communication, social media is a two-way street.
If you would like customers and followers to be engaged, you’ve got to be engaged yourself. Stay active and answer comments and questions on your own social media posts in a way that’s appropriate to your brand.
11. Customer Service and Support
Customers now expect companies to handle their requests through social media.
Research published in the Harvard Business Review shows that brands that don’t meet those expectations damage their bottom line.
A strong investment in customer service can build meaningful relationships between your company and your customers. And with social media, the challenge of customer service remains as demanding as it had before.
12. Customer Feedback
Success, both digitally and traditionally, is achieved by understanding — and delivering — the best quality customer service possible, and doing everything in your power to make sure your customer and potential customers have the best possible experience together with your company.
Social media helps us maintain that reputation by giving us platforms to directly interact with our customers like we never have before. That also means we are receiving real customer feedback directly from the source, faster than ever before (and usually far more raw, too).
The ultimate goal is to have the customer understand us and depend on us for our authoritative approach within our niche over our competition.
