Did you know that there are more than 7.7 billion people in the world and almost 2.5 of them are active on Facebook? Moreover, social media platforms such as YouTube and Whatsapp also have at least one billion active users who seek entertainment or information. Statistics like these shows how connected the world is and the opportunities business can have.
Are you aware of the benefits of social media marketing? The advantages are huge for every business owner who seeks to sell products and services:
Since billions of people are online every day, you can use this to your advantage to increase brand awareness. Keep in mind that there are also thousands of websites just like yours online and you need to do something to get to the top. Using social media will boost your brand and make yourself known to the large public.
How can you do that? Use smart social media posts, articles, and videos. Increasing your brand awareness is a long-term strategy and if more people know about you, it’s more likely that someone will eventually buy your products or services.
If you open up a shop in your town to sell hand-made wood figurines, your audience consists of the people who pass by and see your products. On the other hand, if you create a website as well as social media accounts, and then decide to do paid and or organic social, you can reach a much broader audience – and with targeting nowadays, you can reach the right target audience.
Reaching a larger audience is one of the biggest advantages of social media marketing. You can also target certain segments based on age, preferences, location, income, etc. This will help you increase your ROI and make your business known to the world quicker.
Believe it or not, you don’t need a large budget to get started with social media marketing. Ideally, you would want to make use of organic and paid advertising to achieve the best results.
Organic social media is used to build a community of loyal followers and customers through posting relevant content and interacting with those who interact with your brand. Paid social media is a method of displaying advertisements or sponsored marketing messages on popular social media platforms, and targeting a specific sub-audience. Pay-per-click advertising, branded or influencer-generated content, and display ads are all examples. With paid, you do have control over your spending, budget, and campaigns can be paused or even stopped at any given time, making social media marketing more cost-effective. However, we highly recommend a strategic plan for your organic and paid social media needs.
Social media platforms are interactive websites where people discuss things in real-time. This can be an advantage for business owners because they get to obtain feedback on their products almost instantly. For example, people who have bought your products can leave reviews on your Facebook page. They can also New Windowprovide constructive criticism to help you improve your services. Because of this, social listening and monitoring are extremely important.
This type of feedback is valuable because it helps you to develop and fine-tune your products quicker, offering your clients exactly what they want. Without social media platforms, you might have to wait for someone to leave a review on your website or send an email. The sooner you improve your products based on real-time feedback, the quicker you’ll advance in your industry and stay ahead of competitors.
The more people talk about your company, your products, and your services, the better. Social media platforms offer people the opportunity to express themselves freely. This is a good thing because when someone starts a discussion about your post, article, or product, others can chime in to share their opinions.
Such free discussions help to increase brand awareness and will drive more traffic to your website and other media channels. You can start the discussion by yourself or encourage other people to do it. You can also create polls on various social media platforms and allow people to vote. This helps you interact with your customers and find out their preferences in a fun and entertaining way.
Let’s say that some people find out about your products from a Facebook post and decide to visit your website. They are interested, but haven’t made a purchase yet. Using social media marketing for lead generation is highly recommended because it gives you the opportunity to drive potential clients through an efficient buying cycle.
Since there are so many social media platforms out there, you can have incoming interested customers and leads from different sources. This will increase the total number of sales you make every month and increase your profits automatically as well.
Social media interaction offers many benefits if it’s done right. As mentioned earlier, people can leave feedback on your products and services. Use this feedback to improve your offerings and to show your customers that you care about their opinion. This is something that many clients appreciate and they might become loyal to you as a result.
Having loyal customers is key for the continuity of your business. Posting on social media regularly helps you maintain a good relationship with your old and new clients. This improves your credibility and authority in the industry, making your audience come back and buy from you again and again.
SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is the science of making your website rank higher in search engine result pages. Studies show that most people don’t go beyond the first result page when looking for something online, so if your website isn’t there, it might never be found. With the help of SEO, you can get your website in the first results returned by a search query and get all the traffic associated with these positions.
But how is SEO improved using social media marketing? Through “likes” and “shares” online. If your content is liked and shared by other people, Google and other search engines consider that it’s relevant for your specific niche or industry.
That’s why your job should be to create interesting, informative, and entertaining content that can easily go viral. If your content is good, it will automatically be distributed by other people to their friends and family members, increasing brand awareness for you and maximizing your profits. A piece of content can go viral and get distributed by thousands of people in just a few days, so it’s important to create top-notch articles or videos if you want this to happen.
Apart from leaving feedback related to your products and services, social media platforms also allow you to easily interact with customers. For example, you can answer common questions people might have about your business. You can create short video responses that can be uploaded in the body of your replies.
This helps you stay in touch with your audience and cater to their particular needs and preferences. Without social media marketing, you might only be able to discuss with your customers through emails. This can be time-consuming and not that easily accessible, especially when you consider the number of spam emails sent every day worldwide.
Social media platforms also allow you to create group conversations, private chat rooms, or webinars. This is how you gather a lot of people interested in your business in one place. Strategies like these should be used to increase brand awareness, answer common questions, and teach something relevant to your customers.
Although Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram usually provide more than enough opportunities for webmasters and business owners, there are other platforms you can take advantage of. For example, many people use LinkedIn frequently as well as Snapchat and Pinterest. Some of these platforms are optimized for a particular type of content format such as videos or images only.
You don’t necessarily need to be everywhere all the time to promote your brand. Test multiple platforms and see what works best for you. If your business involves selling make-up sets or female clothing and accessories, you might want to use Pinterest more often as this platform is frequently visited by women.
This is another great advantage of using social media marketing – it will work for you 24/7 even when you sleep. Let’s say that you want to draw attention to your recently opened pizza restaurant. You can distribute some flyers and make go for a short radio commercial. But once your advertising campaigns are over, that’s it. You will have to invest more money to distribute more flyers and so on if you want to keep promoting your restaurant.
On the other hand, social media marketing works all the time. You post content online and keep building your blog, video library or followers on social media platforms. Your content will be online and visible 24/7 until and if you decide to delete it. As a result, your consistent work is never lost and you will continuously build your reputation and credibility to attract more customers.
Customers, particularly new ones, like to interact with a real person, not necessarily with a website or logo. They need to know that you are a genuine person just like them. Social media platforms allow you to do this effectively, helping you to make your brand more humane.
For example, you can post a few details about you, your preferences, and your background in your chosen niche or industry. You can also include one or more professional photos so that people see that you’re a real person. If you have employees, you can also let your customers meet your team. You can post short biographies about your customer service representatives, account managers, etc.
This strategy helps you warm up potential clients and let them know they are dealing with real people. You should also routinely interact with your customers on social media platforms to let them know you care for their opinions and preferences.
One of the best things about advertising on social media is that you can track the results of your campaign and make small adjustments on the go. For example, you can see your audience’s engagement with your posts such as blog articles, videos, e-book, etc. Tracking details such as how many likes your post generated or how many times it was shared can help you see if you’re going in the right direction.
Measuring the effectiveness of your campaign is essential. Remember that whatever can be measured can be controlled. If you want more traffic to your website, you should track how much you get from different social media platforms. Measuring such statistics can be done using Google Analytics or the built-in analytics program of each social media platform you use.
As you can see, the benefits of social media marketing are broad and long-lasting. Most companies that have tried social media for marketing purposes have continued to use such strategies over the years. This gives you an idea of how powerful a smart social media marketing campaign can be, regardless of the size of your business or its scope.
But we are also aware that social media marketing can get complex sometimes. That’s why we encourage you to contact us today to learn how we can help you create superb content to be posted on your favorite social media platforms. We have years of experience building brands and we are happy to collaborate with you too!
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