The Benefits of Social Media Marketing

10 Ways Social Media Can Benefit Your Business

Some entrepreneurs believe social media is simply another fad, or “the next big thing”, something temporary that needs to be taken advantage of while it’s still in the spotlight. To others, its a gateway to much much more. Because it appeared so rapidly, social media has developed a reputation of being a passing market interest, in other words, it’s unprofitable.

However, the statistics show a different picture. According to Hubspot, in 2014, 92% of marketers claimed that social media marketing was an important part of their business, with 80% indicating their efforts increased traffic to their website. While companies who are participating in social media marketing have seen growth, they sometimes aren’t sure which social media tools are the best to use.

Take a look at some of the ways social media marketing can improve your business:

Our Top Ten

1. Increased Brand Recognition

Every opportunity you have to push your content and increase your brands visibility is valuable. Social media networks are just new channels for your brand’s voice, and to share content on. It’s important to be active on social media as it makes your business easier and more accessible for new customers. Plus it makes your existing customers get better antiquated with you, sharing your brand on social platforms makes you more familiar and recognizable.

2. Improved Brand Loyalty

Brands who engage on social media channels have a better relationship with their customers, they remain loyal to a brand they constantly see and engage with. Businesses should take advantage of the tools social media gives by connecting with their audience. 

3. More Opportunities to Convert

Each post you make on social media is an opportunity to turn followers and viewers into customers. By building a following, you’ll simultaneously gain access to new, old, and recent customers, getting to interact with each one. Each image, video, blog post, and comment is a chance for someone to react, each reaction could lead to a site visit, and eventually a conversion. While not every interaction with your business will result in a conversion, a positive interaction will increase the likelihood of an eventual conversion.

4. Higher Conversion Rates

Brands become more humanized when interacting with consumers on social media channels, leading to higher conversion rates. Social media is a place where businesses can act like others, as people rather than a brand, this is important because people enjoy doing business with other people, rather than corporate businesses. Additionally, when companies have a higher number of followers on social media, it tends to improve trust and credibility in the brand.

5. Higher Brand Authority

Interacting with your customers on a daily basis means is essential to growing a following. Consider this, when people want to compliment a product or service, they go to social media. And when they post your businesses name, new audience members will want to follow you for updates. The more people are talking about you on social media, the more valuable and authoritative your brand will seem (Just look at the Kardashians).

6. Increased Inbound Traffic

Without social media, your inbound traffic is limited to people already familiar with your brand and individuals searching for keywords you currently rank for. Every social media profile you add is another path leading back to your site, and every piece of content you syndicate on those profiles is another opportunity for a new visitor. The more quality content you syndicate on social media, the more inbound traffic you’ll generate, and more traffic means more leads and more conversions.

7. Decreased Marketing Costs 

According to Hubspot, 84% of marketers found as little as six hours of effort per week was enough to generate increased traffic. A six hour time period is not a significant investment for a channel as large as social media. If you just spend one hour a day dedicated to developing your content and syndication strategy, you could start seeing results of your efforts. Paid advertising through socials like Facebook and Twitter are relatively cheap, start small so you avoid worrying about going over budget. When you feel better about what to expect result wise, you can increase your budget, which leads to increased conversions.

8. Better Search Engine Rankings

SEO is the best way to capture relevant traffic from search engines, but the requirements for success are always changing. It’s no longer enough to regularly update your blog, ensure optimized title tags and meta descriptions, and distribute links pointing back to your site. Google and other search engines may be calculating their rankings using social media presence as a significant factor, because of the fact that strong brands almost always use social media. As such, being active on social media could act as a “brand signal” to search engines that your brand is legitimate, credible, and trustworthy. That means, if you want to rank for a given set of keywords, having a strong social media presence could be almost mandatory.

9. Richer Customer Experiences

Social media is simply another communication channel like emails and phone calls. Every time you interact with a customer on social media you have the opportunity to publicly demonstrate your customer service level and enrich your relationship with your customers. For example, if a customer complains about your product or service on Facebook, you can immediately address the comment, apologize publicly, and take action to make it right. You can also thank customers if they compliment you, offer them additional products, and simply show your gratitude!

10. Improved Customer Insights

Social media also gives you an opportunity to gain valuable information about what your customers are interested in and how they behave. We achieve this by social listening, for example you can monitor users comments to see what people think of your brand and business. Segment your content syndication list based on topic and see what types of content generate the most interest for you, then produce more of that type of content.

These are just some of the benefits of sustaining a long-term social media campaign. While you may feel apprehensive, consider the fact that your competition is already involved, and the potential losses by not creating a social media marketing strategy are pretty significant. Remember, the sooner you start, the sooner you reap the benefits. Remember, social media is here to stay, and if you want your company to thrive for years and years to come, you may want to get started! Head over to our contact page and let us know if we can help build your social media marketing to the next level!