Why is Social Media Important for Businesses?
Social media has grown in recent years from a platform in which young people could communicate with friends, to a fantastic marketing tool. There are now more people using social media than ever, with 1.94 billion people using Facebook each month, whilst Twitter sees 328 million users per month. Social media is of the easiest and most influential ways a business a can connect with its audience.
Here are 7 lessons you can utilise to attract consumers and save money by successfully harnessing the power of social media.
1. Increase brand awareness
There are few people who are not active on social media nowadays, the same can be said for most businesses. Through adopting an online presence, you allow your customers to seek out and connect with you. Connecting with your consumers in this is way is likely to lead to increased loyalty towards your brand as well as increased customer retention. Your competitors are using social media marketing, so you really should too.
2. Gain insight into the consumer
Using social media, you gain the ability to have invaluable insight into all aspects of your consumer. Social listening allows you to monitor and gather data on your consumers such as, who they are, what they like, and their attitude towards your brand. Social channels provide you with data on the demographics of your current audience. Using tools such as Hootsuite, information can be gathered across all social platforms. This data can then be utilised to tailor content to your audience much more successfully than with offline communication channels.
3. Run targeted ads and target content
Running advertisements through social media allows for content to be specifically tailored to ensure you engage with the right audience. Social networks have tools allowing for content to be targeted at different age groups, different countries, interests and behaviours. When you run advertisements through social media you can achieve real-time response from your audience and create immediate sales. As Facebook campaigns are relatively cheap to run, (as long as your campaign is well-targeted) this saves you time and money, allowing you to produce effective campaigns more easily and ultimately increase return on investment.
4. Provide customer service and build rapport
Social media is not just a platform to run advertisements to sell your latest product or service; creating an emotional connection with your audience is likely to increase your reputation. Social platforms can be a fantastic location for delivering customer service, allowing you to create a community of loyal consumers and increase retention through customer satisfaction. Engaging through social media is the ideal place to turn a consumer’s negative situation into a positive one. Communication such as through social platforms is something traditional advertising could not achieve, customers can now share these experiences with other people and in turn attract new consumers for your brand.
Business owners concerned about social media uncovering a negative brand reputation should note that these conversations will be had in any case. Having a managed social media presence allows these conversations to be collected and managed, and with effective customer service can often transform a negative review into a positive one.
5. Increase SEO ranking and website traffic
Potentially one of the biggest advantages when it comes to utilising social media is the impact it can have on your website traffic. In general, the more interaction you have on your social media platform, the higher your ranking can be on search engines. Utilising keywords and sharing high-quality content on your social media is favourable in terms of rankings on Google search. Actively using social media and rich content and combining this with SEO efforts will maximise the opportunities your business has to target new consumers.
6. Monitor Competitors
As well as offering a valuable insight into your consumer, social media monitoring also allows you to gain important information regarding your competitors. You can monitor the mentions your competitors get, or which keywords are regularly searched. Utilising your social platform as a free search tool will help you to obtain information to help you attain a greater understanding of your industry. Using this knowledge will allow you to make tactical decisions about your business to stay ahead of your competitors, offering content they may be lacking from others as well as improved products and services.
7. Share content quickly
Something that was not possible before the aid of social media is the ability to share content almost instantly with your audience. By sharing any information regarding your business on your social platforms, you can reach your audience with minimum effort and spend. This makes social ideal for flash sales, exclusive offers for your most engaged customers, and customer service announcements.
There is no doubt that marketing through social media is beneficial for businesses. Acknowledging these key points and utilising them to manage your social media platforms effectively will have positive results for your business.
Find out how your business can benefit from effective social media.
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