If you haven’t developed your social media strategy yet, it’s time to catch up with the times and start leveraging today’s social media landscape. There are many reasons to use social media but here are our top ten.
- Increase web traffic – 75% of marketers reporting positive results with traffic increase as one of the major benefits of social media*.
- Improve search rankings – Both Google and Bing have confirmed that they take ‘Likes’, ‘Shares’ and ‘Tweets’ and even the ‘Social Influence’ of a user into their search algorithms, and social metrics are well correlated with higher search engine rankings. Combining SEO efforts with social media will help maximise your marketing efforts.
- Increase brand awareness – Social engagement can strengthen the awareness of your brand and give it a human face.
- Research and educate the market – Social media is a great market research tool available for any business that aims to assess market perception of their brand and educate the market.
- Engage customers – Social media marketing is the perfect way to keep your customers up to date with new product releases or other services and to promote your company in a more relaxed and friendly way.
- Provide thought leadership – It lets you promote content, share white papers and industry trends illustrating your domain expertise.
- Develop a loyal community of prospects – Social media allows you to build the trust and credibility through sharing the relevant content, listening, monitoring and engaging in conversation.
- Drive Sales – If done successfully, social media may help sales. A well-run social media campaign, one that educates and informs its customer base, provides great (and free) content, will keep your brand in customer’s minds, so that when they are ready to buy, they will think of your brand.
- Improve customer retention/loyalty – Social media can be a great source of customer service, assisting with feedback and complaint resolution. Customer satisfaction is the key to retention and in the long run it is loyalty awarding to your brand.
- Cut marketing costs – In the past years social media has taken over traditional print marketing and advertising. Promoting your products on social media platforms will release a strain from your marketing budget but you will need to invest in people resources.
Now that you have understood the benefits of social media on your business, be sure to take steps and build your social footprint!