Fact: If your business doesn’t have a social media presence, your brand is missing out on many exciting benefits.
With over 4.70 billion users from around the globe, social media allows brands to interact with customers and share information in real time. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram enable business owners to build brand awareness, drive sales, and improve customer relationships.
Social media is arguably the most diverse digital marketing tool available today, making it vital for brands. To help you find your footing, this guide will extensively discuss why social media is important for your business.
Social media is a one-stop shop where you can market your brand, sell your products and services, and attend to your customers' concerns. Using social networks as a marketing platform allows you to reach customers and prospects wherever they may be.
A sound social media marketing strategy will have you post consistently, develop a steady brand voice and tone for your brand, engage and connect with your customers, and know your audience with the help of different analytics tools. Moreover, most social media platforms like Facebook have advertising mediums for you to reach your target audience and keep track of campaigns.
As a sales tool, social media can be one of the most direct ways to earn profit. In addition to its marketing capabilities, platforms such as Instagram have their own online selling platform (Instagram Shop) and this allows brands to drive more conversions.
As a customer service channel, social media helps you quickly address your customer’s concerns. You build strong ties with your customers when you respond to problems promptly. Research shows that 42% of customers expect merchants to respond to their complaints on social media within 60 minutes.
Social media is undoubtedly a great place to get discovered. Sprout Social reveals that 55% of consumers find new brands on their social accounts, which greatly emphasizes the channel's value.
Being present on different social platforms allows you to tell your brand’s story, reveal why you do what you do, and keep audiences updated with developments. Moreover, it enables you to post content that will expose your brand to new audiences and entice those who genuinely are interested in transacting with you.
More often than not, customers usually interact first with a brand through social media, so it’s critical that you properly establish your brand identity.
Fortunately, social platforms can help build your brand’s identity since it emphasizes vital components of your branding, such as your aesthetic appeal and tone. It’s important to be consistent since these aspects will help pave the way for better brand recall.
Social media platforms have analytics tools that will grant you more insight into your audience. These data, from demographics to preferences, are highly valuable since they can help you effectively target your promotional materials.
As you start with social media, take some time to identify which channels your customers are on. Each platform accommodates a different set of people, so you must determine which platform your targets are located on.
For example, Facebook is ideally where older generations hang out, while Twitter and Instagram appeal to younger audiences between 18-34 years old.
Lastly, it’s important to note that your competitors are also likely to be active on social media. With this, you can acquire a lot of insight by observing how they do things. How do your competitors brand themselves? What kind of audience responds to their posts and engages with them?
All these factors let you adjust your social media marketing plan that hits your desired target audience and influences them to transact with you.
Social media allows you to source content in two ways: sourcing ideas by directly asking users what type of content they want to see and engaging in social listening. When you give people what they’re asking for, they’ll most likely consume your content and share it among their networks.
The other way to get content is by sourcing material for posts involving your followers in some sort of interactive activity (e.g. contests or user-generated content). Doing so successfully builds interest in your brand and gives you a variety of content options to choose from.
With social media, you can listen to what your audience is saying about your brand (social media monitoring) and gauge if you’re getting favorable feedback from them or not.
Being mentioned a lot could be a good thing, but if your brand is being talked about for the wrong reasons, there might be some things you need to work on so you can continue to protect your brand’s reputation.
As the world continues its shift towards the digital space, businesses across all industries will naturally follow suit. It means more companies will utilize digital marketing channels to assert their place in their respective industries.
Social media offers various benefits to small and large-scale brands. Now that platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn have asserted their relevance across all industries, consumers and entrepreneurs expect brands to have a strong social presence across different platforms.
As you get started with your social media journey, make sure to optimize other vital components of your online store. If you want to scale up in no time, consider acquiring eCommerce services that will help you increase the ROI of your social media campaigns!