Social media platforms have drastically risen over the years, with the number of available social networks constantly growing. Popular social platforms like Facebook and Instagram are always adding new features. Understanding how social media helps business is important for any business owner.
With a large number of active users, social media has become an integral advertising tool for different industries. However, not everyone realizes that social media is a powerful tool for their business. Read on to find out how social media helps small businesses grow, the different social channels you can use, and the benefits it can bring.
What Is Social Media?
Social media websites are Internet-based platforms that allow people to build and maintain long-distance online relationships. Social media is the primary means of communication in the world today. It enables people to conveniently create and share videos, photos, and other user-generated content.
Social media users communicate their ideas, activities, experiences, and other information through smartphones, laptops, and various gadgets. They engage in different social media activities such as posting positive reviews on online review sites, posting visual content via Instagram Stories, and commenting on blog posts on social media forums.
The Role of Social Media in Business
Initially conceptualized as a means of interacting with friends and family, social media started in the early 2000s. Due to its growing popularity, businesses chose to adopt this new communication method to reach out to customers. Business owners decided to benefit from social media’s ability to connect and share information with people worldwide.
Why Is Social Media Important for Business?
- Effective in gaining new audiences. According to DataReportal, there are over 4.62 billion social media users. Successful social media campaigns can reach new audiences with engaging content.
- It showcases a brand’s qualities. Social media efforts can be a good way to build trust and loyalty with your consumer base. Satisfied customers can leave positive reviews that boost the business’s online reputation.
- It reduces overall marketing costs. Even with a small budget, a business can boost its posts on social media platforms to reach its target consumers by using specific demographics, keywords, and interests.
- It keeps the business relevant. Original, appropriate, and timely social posts keep the company in current and potential customers’ minds.
- It aids in lead generation. Frequent posts on a variety of social media sites can gain the interest of potential customers, which translates into future sales.
How Social Media Helps Small Businesses
- Broaden brand awareness and interest. Small business owners can advertise their products and services online. Social media can increase a small business’ visibility, which widens the reach of the business. Marketing and advertising campaigns help to gain a larger audience.
- Increases website traffic. An engaging social media post can spark a customer’s interest, leading to shares, likes, and comments on the business’s page. This also helps companies gain social media followers.
- Affordable marketing option. Marketing can be expensive. Small businesses with tight marketing budgets can use social media to grow their customer base without going overboard on their spending.
What Can Social Media Do for Your Business?
Social media has become an essential part of marketing and advertising strategies. Social media networks help boost brand awareness, develop customer leads, and increase site traffic. It’s a powerful advertising tool that can attract and enlarge the customer base. It can generate publicity and foster customer loyalty. Below are a few benefits of social media for business.
10 Things Social Media Can Do for Your Business
1. Generate Brand Awareness and Interest
With its large user base, social media helps to promote your business’ products and services to more people. Social media posts can reach target audiences previously inaccessible by traditional marketing strategies.
2. Collect Insights and Ideas to Enhance Your Business Method
Social media platforms have built-in analytic tools to provide relevant business data. You can develop and grow your business plan based on this data. It can help you better understand your customer base, which can help you develop the best possible products.
3. Increase the Market Reach of Your Business
Social media broadens your marketing reach by helping you get into international markets without adding marketing costs. Potential customers all over the world use social media websites like Instagram and Twitter. Many businesses hire social media managers to help them use social media platforms effectively.
4. Increase Business Revenue
Social media advertising helps you to build customer networks. This creates potential customer leads, which eventually translate into sales. According to Statista, there are 295.48 million social media users in the US alone. A strong social media strategy can help you access almost limitless potential customers.
5. Accessible Customer Support
Many people turn to social media to communicate any dissatisfaction or problems they encounter with a product or service. Social media provides your business with a channel to respond to these quickly, which enhances your customer service reputation. Good customer service can also help you maintain loyal customers.
6. Brand Accessibility
Social media makes your products and services easily searchable and available to potential customers. If a customer is able to find your products easily, they are much more likely to buy from your company.
7. Flexible Social Media Marketing Strategy
You can modify your existing marketing strategy to fit your various social platforms. If you keep your audience in mind while you create marketing material, it is easy to alter the content slightly to make it work for a variety of platforms. Your messaging can also be modified to fit your business’ different marketing events.
8. Affordable Video Marketing
You can incorporate videos on your social media posts without additional charges. You can be imaginative and experimental when creating this content. It can be a vlog, product demo, or customer testimonial.
9. Monitor Competition
It’s a good business strategy to keep an eye on your competition, and social media makes it very easy to keep you updated with what your competitors are doing. You can easily compare social media metrics to see how your business compares. There are many online courses and classes available if you want to learn social media marketing strategies.
10. Recruitment of Skilled Staff
Job networking sites like LinkedIn can help your business get the most suitable candidate for any job openings. Posting job listings online can help a wide variety of people learn about the opportunity, which in turn can give your hiring team more options to choose from. You can also recruit valuable employees using these sites.
Examples of How Social Media Helps Business
Many businesses have benefited from social media marketing, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. One notable example is BooHoo, a fashion retailer of PrettyLittleThing and Nasty Gal. Though other fashion retailers struggled under the impact of the pandemic, BooHoo was one of the few who thrived.
BooHoo’s social media strategy is integral to its survival. They partnered with influencers to target and engage their young market. They amuse their audience with fun, relevant, and pop culture-filled content, like #BoohooInTheHouse—a hashtag spinoff to “stay at home style” during the lockdown.
Chipotle is another example of social media success. They are one of the rising star channels of TikTok. Chipotle used social media to become relevant and relatable to younger consumers. Its fun and unique content, such as its #ChipotleLidFlip, generated millions of views. Their most successful content, #GuacDance, garnered 430 million views in six days, according to a Time article.
Conclusion: Why Use Social Media for Business?
As more people use and rely on social networks, it is evident that social media has cemented its essential role in business marketing. Social media content influences the purchasing decisions of many consumers. Businesses with a robust social media presence and branding will increase their audience and conversion rates.
If you want to learn more about using social media for business, you might want to enroll in a social media marketing bootcamp. Bootcamps like BrainStation, have various digital and social media marketing courses to help you build your business social media presence. Their curriculum will ensure that you learn the skills you need to start a new career in marketing.
How Social Media Helps Business FAQ
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok are the best business social media platforms. The two main factors you need to consider are your business objective and your target audience. Some social media channels, like LinkedIn, concentrate on business-to-business (B2B) interactions, while others focus on business-to-customer (B2C) interactions.
You can increase your business follower count by driving up your page’s engagement rates. High-quality, relevant content delivered to your specific target audience can help you achieve this goal. Post original content on blogs, Instagram Stories, and Facebook Live. Your community of followers plays a crucial role in helping your content go viral.
Spamming is one of the top common social media marketing mistakes. It annoys people who might report your page. Other common mistakes are not interacting with your followers and alienating your audience, which makes them unfollow you. Inconsistent and irrelevant social media posts are also a problem.
Social media marketers run the official social media profiles for the client company. They maintain an online presence promoting customer engagement and create social media marketing campaigns. An entry-level social media marketer earns $43,321 annually, according to Glassdoor.
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