For social media marketing to be successful, both strategy and creativity are required. Although it could seem overwhelming, its importance cannot be overstated. Due to its importance, over around 92% of marketers incorporate social media into their marketing plans. Furthermore, 78% of Social Media Marketing salesperson outperform their non-using counterparts in terms of sales. Furthermore, its benefits go far beyond increasing sales.
However, not all businesses are aware of the benefits of social media marketing. In reality, nearly 40% of small businesses don’t use social media.Even more concerning is the fact that 16% of additional respondents said they were unlikely to use social media for business at all.
Undoubtedly, there is a gap between those who utilise social media and others who find it challenging to get started. If you fit into the latter category, keep reading. You’re about to learn how social media marketing may help your business grow. Among other benefits, you’ll learn about the following ones:
- Increasing brand awareness Using social media marketing will make it easier to inform people of the objectives and offerings of your business.
- The volume of traffic to your website will increase dramatically as a result of using social media and linking to it.
- In the end, you invest money in marketing to advertise your products and services, correct?
Build A Foundation Of Social Media Skills For Your Business
Unsure of where to start? If you want to learn how to use social media marketing to grow your brand, Actionable Marketing Institute has the perfect course for you.
Social media strategy is a subject offered by the Actionable Marketing Institute.
Take AMI’s Social Media Strategy Certification course to learn the fundamentals of social media marketing and take control of your online presence. To assist you in creating a social media plan that produces results, this course gives you access to 11 video courses, 8 premium templates, and a lot more.
Why is Social Media Important For Your Business?
To survive in a competitive market, you must be aware of new trends in your industry. In fact, 72% of companies use data from social media to make informed decisions about their operations. How can you outperform the competition and ensure that your business is making the right moves to succeed? Of course, through social media. The next 20 reasons will persuade you to include social media in your business’s marketing strategy.
1. Builds Brand Awareness and Recognition
Increasing brand recognition and awareness is one of every company’s most important marketing goals. This is understandable because consumers want to buy brands they recognize. Even some consumers show some signs of brand loyalty, which is beneficial for firms in the long run. We are grateful for social media, which makes creating a brand easy and effective.
Social media offers the advantage of swiftly increasing customer accessibility compared to traditional media for your brand. Additionally, it grabs people’s attention even when they aren’t thinking about your company or its goods.
Your profile and cover photographs should be noted. A great way to increase brand recognition is by placing your logo strategically and frequently. Make sure it won’t be intrusive or distracting.
Go to the Adidas Twitter page. Adidas keeps a well-kept and expert Twitter profile. They boldly but not intrusively display their recognisable symbol on their cover photo. Because it showcases adidas’ products while promoting the company’s brand identity, this cover image is especially powerful.
2. Generates Conversation Around Your Brand
Discussions about your firm, its products, and business partners will start when you have a sound social media marketing strategy.
Take as an example this tweet about Xbox Game Pass. All they did was tweet that one of their games was now available on EA Play. As a result of doing this, they received a lot of feedback on their product. They also sparked discussion. Social media was enabling real conversations between fans.
Xbox Twitter thread on a new game’s release
Advice: React to comments made by your audience on your social media posts. Make certain they believe the brand has a personality. If people don’t feel like they are chatting to a robot, they will have a better image of your company and will feel more respected.
Prioritize sharing knowledge that naturally leads to conversation. Praise other companies you collaborate with and network with, for instance.
Request feedback on your products.
Engage the audience by asking open-ended questions and then allowing them to answer.
3. Helps Understand Your Target Customers’ Interests
You must be aware of your target audience’s interests if you wish to communicate with them successfully. By keeping a watch on their online discussions about specific topics, you can accomplish this. Social listening is the process of comprehending the priorities and fashion trends of your audience. Furthermore, by learning about their issues, you might be able to offer content that deals with their issues.
Belk tweeted about a philanthropic project.
Visit the Belk Twitter page. This tweet’s message of female empowerment is directly in line with the interests of their intended audience. By holding similar beliefs, they are able to connect with their target audience more effectively. If you’re unsure of how to match the interests of your target customers, social listening may be helpful.
Consider incorporating social listening into your everyday routine to see what topics are trending in your industry among your target market. If you want to improve your social listening abilities, check out Mention (the same social listening tool used by the CoSchedule team).
4. Provides Platforms to Tell Your Brand’s Story
It’s a great idea to share stories and the mission of your brand on social media. Effective storytelling has a big impact on your brand’s perception. These stories can be short or long, depending on what you think will be most beneficial.
Tweet from Starbucks defending a customer
Think about this Starbucks post, for instance. They made the decision to publish a video about a customer who had an emotional encounter at a Starbucks drive-through. They conveyed that their product (or service) is good enough for someone to promote them in addition to showing how they had an impact on one of their clients.
A word of advice: Not every story has to be drawn out and complicated. Making a point and conveying meaning can both be accomplished with a simple graphic. As long as it presents a gripping story, it can greatly enhance how the public views your organisation.
5. Helps You Gather Data About Your Audience
Audience research is similar to social listening. It utilises the keywords that your target market will employ even though it concentrates more on your specific goods. This information may be obtained through social media.
On many social media networks, you can examine the reach and insights of all your postings.
- To access your page’s Facebook page insights:
- Go to the page that you are in charge of maintaining.
- Scroll down to the “Manage Page” section on the left-hand side of the screen.
- Choose “Insights”
- Scroll down and select “People” to obtain specific audience metrics.
To view the analytics for your Twitter page:
- Open the tweet whose stats you want to see.
- Under the tweet, on the far right, click the “analytics” icon.
- From the menu on the left side of your Twitter page, choose “More.”
- Click “Analytics” to examine global analytics that don’t pertain to any one content.
Examine the insights for your Instagram page using the mobile app; go to your profile.
“Insights” should be chosen.
You can scroll down and click “See All” to see “Your Audience” in its entirety.
6. Helps Provide Responsive Customer Service
Customers now expect companies to answer their questions on social media. An important investment in customer service can establish enduring relationships between your company and its customers. Even in the social media age, providing top-notch customer service can be challenging.
Social media allows for immediate contact and customer feedback. Companies can also respond to customers right away. Since 71% of customers who had a positive experience with a brand on a social media platform said they were more likely to recommend that brand to the people they know, having a social media customer service plan is essential.
Twitter conversation between a user and Spotify customer care
Take a look at this example from the Spotify support Twitter account. After receiving a query from a user via Twitter, Spotify was able to respond and offer assistance in locating a solution within a few hours.
Keep lines of communication open between your customer care and social media teams if you have separate teams for each. When providing customer support in this way via social media, your personnel won’t get lost.
7. Helps Build Customer Loyalty
What could be more advantageous than promoting brand loyalty without incurring any expenses? Customers interact and support the brands they enjoy. Actually, 90% of customers say they buy things from companies they follow on social media.
If customers follow you, there is a clear direct correlation that they will choose you over your rivals. Additionally, they will increase your traffic if they are regular customers.
Maintain the satisfaction and attention of your devoted audience. Here are a few ideas:
- Share coupon codes with your social media followers while being mindful of Facebook’s guidelines for promotional content.
- Ask open-ended questions that encourage your audience to respond.
- Give away reasonably priced goods that will have an impact, such Koozies, stickers, patches, t-shirts, sunglasses, lanyards, and hats.
8. Helps Drive Traffic to Your Website
Social media marketing can aid in increasing website traffic. Despite the fact that search engines are great, depending too much on the results means you’re missing out on a tonne of possible clients. Social media networks provide more diverse inbound traffic sources.
You should consider how regularly you should publish even if social networks are great for bringing traffic to your website. You don’t want to become that obnoxious salesperson since you’ll turn off your audience.
Maintaining a consistent publishing schedule is an excellent idea. This guarantees that your content is posted consistently.
Before adding links to articles and profiles, shorten them using bit.ly. The reduced links will save space and won’t be bothersome to the audience. (You may do this by utilising the bit.ly interface on your CoSchedule social media calendar.)
In the example below, Best Buy used the bit.ly link to point users from their tweet to their website.
Best Buy tweeted about a new membership programme.
9. Tweets Can Show Up in Google Searches
Social media can aid in link building, which may have an indirect impact on SEO.
Tweets are shown in Google and Bing search results. This tool allows users to see what other people are saying about a topic of interest. It is more relevant since more current tweets will appear on the search engine results page for topics that are trending.
Google’s search results for “online poker”
Use a social media scheduling tool like CoSchedule’s Marketing Calendar to organise your social media postings so that they can be found and linked to.
10. Helps Identify and Connect With Potential Business Partners and Collaborators
- Through social media, it is possible to meet new people. Here are some tactics you could employ to maximise this for your business:
LinkedIn Groups: There are 1.8 billion users of Facebook groups. There is a good chance you will locate some potential business partners on Facebook because there are millions of groups there. By participating in those communities, you can network with individuals who could be interested in working with your business. - LinkedIn was developed to let professionals connect with potential customers, workers, or employers. In actuality, 72% of B2B buyers provide important information about their companies on LinkedIn. You can perform research and find people who might like to collaborate using the network of over 467 million users on LinkedIn.
- Twitter: You can connect with customers as well as the right kind of people for your business with this social media platform. Create groups of persons who may be valuable for your social media goals using Twitter’s list feature. You can concentrate your interaction on these potential business partners once you’ve identified them.
- Instagram: Instagram has become one of the best platforms for getting in touch with content creators and brand partners. In reality, Instagram collaborations are on the rise, and by 2021, influencer marketing is expected to reach a value of over $13.8 billion. Instagram artists can now mark the companies on their “favourite brands list” that they are interested in collaborating with. Additionally, this gives innovators an advantage when businesses start seeking for new partners.
Consider creating your own Facebook or LinkedIn community for the industry you work in. You can find talks about the industry as a whole that will help you develop your product and marketing.
11. It’s Cost Effective
Organic social media marketing is largely cost-free. Both creating a social media profile and releasing unique content are free. It might be enough for certain people, and the high calibre of the content might act as its own type of self-promotion. However, if you want to go above and above and advertise it more, paying for promotion will assist enhance visibility.
Produce sincere writing that doesn’t sound like advertising. It will seem as though your comments are spam. If something seems like an advertisement or has a transactional call to action (like Buy Now, 30% Off, Use This Coupon Code), you should pay for it. The reach of unpaid adverts is being curtailed by social media companies that have realised that many businesses use social media as a means to distribute free advertising. By all means, you should advertise your company on social media. To guarantee a professional image and wide reach, make sure you pay for it.
12. Helps With Repurposing Content
Why not recycle your material when it’s so good for the environment? People ought to be able to see how hard you worked on that. You can repurpose the same information from a blog post or video and share it to your social media accounts. You can connect with readers who may not have read your content the first time by doing this. Additionally, it improves the messaging for your business and might even help your content’s SEO.
In a post on Instagram, Neil Patel referenced a tweet.
For instance, Neil Patel frequently posts his tweets on Instagram. By doing this, he may be able to reach people who do not have a Twitter account. By doing this, he gives people who follow him on both platforms the chance to see him more than once in their feed.
Repurposing content encompasses more than simply posting it in several places, as for example. It is possible to gently alter each post to give it a unique feel. For instance, you could promote your podcast by sharing a comment from your most recent guest on Twitter or Instagram. This is a quick way to fill your social media schedule, even though the content won’t be exactly the same because much of the work has already been done.
Invest In Yourself with AMI’s Social Media Strategy Certification
The following are 20 wonderful benefits of social media marketing for companies. If you thought this was the perfect introduction to social networking but still want more, you’ve come to the right spot.
Actionable Marketing Institute’s Social Media Strategy Certification is an in-depth course covering all things social media, from ideas to measurement, this certification has got you covered.
