With over 3 billion people using social networks across the globe today, the benefits of social media for business are undeniable. Social media users use various platforms to engage with multiple brands, which gives firms countless opportunities for growth and promotion.
A research done by Sherpa Marketing found that more people use social media to follow brands than for following celebrities. Eighty percent of Instagram users follow at least one brand.
Let’s name the most effective ways in which social media helps you grow your business.
Increasing Website Traffic
Driving traffic to your website is relatively comfortable with the help of social media ads and posts. There is no better way of reaching your audience instantly than sharing your site posts across social media accounts. Some social networks, like Twitter, feature social chat options and participation is a fantastic way to increase visibility, get attention and drive traffic to your company website.
Lead Generation
Lead generation is one of the most remarkable benefits of social media for business. Many social networks offer various advertising formats that are specifically designed for lead collecting. Facebook lead ads, for example, allow people to make appointments or schedule a meeting directly through the platform with just a couple of clicks or taps.
Boosting Sales
Regardless of what you’re selling, you can sell it better by using social media. The social accounts of your business are a significant part of your sales funnel, and the advantages it brings shouldn’t be overlooked.
The number of social media users is growing continuously, and social sales tools are evolving each year, and as a result, social networks have already become extremely important for e-commerce and product search.
Partnering With Influencers
Word of mouth is powerful. It drives 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions. When influencers talk about your company or product on social media, they build brand awareness and credibility around your business.
Influencers are people who have a large following on social media platforms; they are people who draw attention and partnering up with them is a proven way of getting noticed. Collaborating with the right influencer can provide your brand with four times the lift in brand awareness than working with a celebrity would.
Content Promotion
Growing your audience by promoting quality content on social media is another substantial benefit of social media for business. For example, Adobe had great success with showcasing its research using LinkedIn Sponsored Content. People who were exposed to this promoted content were 50 percent more likely to accept Adobe as an authority figure when it comes to the future of digital marketing.
Viral Posts
When people like, comment on, or share your posts, they expose it to their followers and friends, creating a massive new audience for your content. When a post goes viral, things get to a whole new level. As people keep sharing your content on social media and their network does the same, your content may get spread all over the internet, gaining you thousands, or even millions of new shares.
While it’s true that going viral is no easy task, it’s also true that it would be utterly impossible without social media.
Sourcing Content
Businesses can source content on social media in two ways:
- Sourcing ideas: If you’re out of ideas for content, the best way to get some valuable ones is asking your audience what they want. Giving people what they’re asking for is the most effective way of creating content that people are going to want to read and share.
- Source material for content: You can create a contest or ask your followers to share their experiences, photos, or anything that would make great content for the future of your social networking. You will end up with a library of social posts you can share over time. With Fedica, you can automate a lot of this stuff; for example have your blogs automatically posted via the Fedica tweet Calendar with RSS feed support.
Audience Monitoring
Social media is a crucial source of gathering information about your brand’s awareness, your competitors, and your industry in general. By monitoring conversations that are relevant to your business or brand, you will get clear insights that you can later use for your future growth strategies. Using Fedica, you can setup Alerts on any mentions of your brands, competitors, and infact any topic!
Learning About Your Customers
A considerable amount of data regarding your customers is generated on social media every day. Using this information is crucial for making smarter business decisions. All major social networks offer some level of analytics that provide you with basic information about the audience that interacts with your account. Knowing your audience and understanding their preferences will help you tailor a better strategy to engage with your potential customers. Fedica offers deep audience segmentation including demographics, location, interests, sentiment and more.
Protecting Your Brand Reputation
While it’s important knowing how much people are talking about your brand, it’s as important how they feel about it. Not all marketing is good marketing. A brand that raises negative feelings and comments can be doomed within a blink of an eye in today’s world of social media. Staying on top of sentiment analysis of your brand’s audience will help you protect your brand’s reputation and avoid possible drawbacks.
Keeping an Eye on the Competition
Tracking mentions of your competitors can give you many valuable insights. For example, it might reveal the low points of their products that you may use to improve your outcomes and win new customers. Monitoring the competition is also important because it brings you full awareness of competitors launching new products, new campaigns, new reports, etc.
Staying on Top of Industry News
In today’s fast-changing world, not being aware of relevant industry news is merely unacceptable for successful businesses. Staying on top of things through social media provides you with timely information about any upcoming changes to your industry that might affect your business.
Targeted Advertising
With the help of social ads, targeted advertising has never been more straightforward. Social media networks feature targeting options so you can quickly reach the exact audience you are aiming for. Targeted advertising helps you make the most of your budget because it enables you to showcase your content to those who would be interested in it. Using Fedica’s Twitter Audience Segmentation tool allows you to fine segmentation and targeting of your Audience.
Retargeting
Did you know that around 70 percent of online shopping carts get abandoned? People who fill a shopping cart, then discard it are crucial potential customers. They have already heard about your site, checked out your products, and they have even chosen the ones they would purchase. They are so close to buying the product; all they need is a little push.
With the help of Facebook Pixel, you can have these potential customers see ads for the exact product they placed in the shopping cart and make them go back to buy it.
Analytics and Reporting
Analytics platforms offer great tracking and analytics tools for social media networks, allowing allow you to see the full impact of all of your activities across the network – from likes and shares to purchases.
Proving return on investment is challenging for marketers, but with the help of many handy tools, you will be able to measure the exact ROI social media brings to your business.
The impact of social media on businesses today is remarkable. You can’t afford to fail to tap into the social media universe – the benefits are just too significant to ignore.