If you haven’t thought about using social media to your benefit yet, it’s about time that you started! It doesn’t matter what kind of business you have, social media has a platform and a strategy that will work for you and your business. It’s important to understand your target audience and their motivation to follow you on social media in order to determine how to best connect with and grow your audience.
There is no longer a question of whether a business should be on social media, but instead it is now a question of how best to do it and how much time to spend on it. Now, I’m not here to force you or your business into the awesome world of social media, but it’s extremely important to be aware of the benefits it will bring to your business.
Today, a large (and growing) number of businesses are utilizing social media as part of their marketing, but for those that aren’t aboard the social media boat yet, here are seven signs you should invest in social media for your business.
1) Making Business Social
If your customers and clients are asking if you have a social profile, chances are you should consider signing up! You should be where your customers are. Being on social media is a great way to participate and track conversations already happening about your products, services, or brand. If your customers and clients are asking if you have a social profile, this just means they are interested in knowing more about your business and it’s the first step in realizing you and your business may need to up your marketing strategy by investing in social media.
2) Your Competitors Are Utilizing Social Media
If both your customers and your competitors are on social media, you should be as well. You don’t want your competitors brand voice to be the only one your customers hear. Take the time to look at your competitor’s sites and check how much interaction they are receiving. Whether they are active or not, you and your business should consider getting in the game and setting a more strategic strategy than theirs.
3) You Do Business Online
If your business has a website and you find yourself doing sales or business off your website, then you should consider cross promoting your website via social media. Make sure your website has all of your social media icons so your customers know that you are keeping up with the latest online business trends. Be sure to link to your website on your social sites and include links to all your social networks on your website.
4) Build Brand Awareness
Social media has opened up a new way to build brand awareness and advertise your company in fun ways, but with so many alternatives to choose from your customers can be often overwhelmed. Seeing that your business is active on social media helps to let potential customers know they can trust you. It also signals that you care about your customers and if any issues rise, that it will be easy to contact you and your business. You can effectively establish your brand’s personality and give your business a human voice that people can relate to. By showing the kind of personality your business has and by connecting with your customers and clients on an emotional level, you are helping your brand stand out from your competitors.
5) We Are The Experts
Do you have a blog on your website or are you considering having one? Social media is a great way to increase traffic to your blog. Blogging can be one of the most effective ways to promote your business, but most people won’t even know that you have a blog if you aren’t promoting it on other social media platforms. It’s important to know how important content marketing is, not only in terms of SEO, but in order to attract new customers. You can help increase awareness of each new blog post that you put up by “shouting” about it on social media. Social media when used with high quality content creation is one of the best ways to attract new customers to your business and also help build authority in your area of expertise!
6) A Bigger Bang For Your Buck
While many social networking platforms are free, it depends on how you look at it and how well you do it. If you plan to do it all yourself, keep in mind you will be investing time into it so be sure to consider that as a cost. If you plan to hire a digital and social marketing agency to help you, you need to plan for that as well. If you have a good scheduling system, investing your time into social media is one of the best ways to promote your business. Facebook and Twitter have added platforms that help with advertising that allow you to target advertisements to specific demographics.
7) Happy Client, Happy Life
.Social media is the perfect way for others to let you know what you are doing wrong and of course, right, as a company! It makes it easy for you to respond efficiently and if you keep your customers and clients happy, then they will give you good reviews on and offline! It’s important not to leave your customer’s questions unanswered. This will make a business look unprofessional, so it is crucial that your business is visible on all of the social networks that your customers are using. Make sure that you are monitoring all of your channels for brand mentions and customer questions too. Remember, happy client, happy life!
Image via soldbystuart.com
Now, we aren’t saying that you have to be on social media or your business will fail. However, if your business, competitors, and your customers are online, you should be too! If you’ve decided to hop on the social media band wagon, the next step you and your business should think about is which social media networks you will start out with and whether you will be doing all the work yourself or if you will hire someone to help you. Take full advantage of social media for your business because if you don’t, you could miss out on a whole new generation of marketing!