Websites are very important in establishing your business’ image on the web. Likewise, there are benefits of social media for business in getting your name in front of potential customers.
A major advantage to your business is having a nicely designed website. Your website is the backbone of all other communication and promotion channels. So, if you have achieved this you are certainly heading in the right direction.
But you should have well developed social media channels as well. Especially when your website it new, it’s hard to be found on Google. This is because new websites just aren’t ranked very high in Google’s search-engine results page [SERP]. And even if you are lucky enough to land toward the top of the SERP, there are still huge benefits of social media for business.
Your website and your social media accounts can work together to better promote your business.
The 5 primary Benefits of Social Media for Business
In today’s competitive markets, it only makes sense to do everything you can to help ensure customers find you online. At first, focus primarily on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook has over 2.2 billion active users! Though Twitter has far fewer at 335 million, the platform is still an excellent business promotion tool.
When getting started, concentrate on the following five benefits of social media for business and then set a course for devoting time to take advantage of this powerful medium.
1. Higher Inbound Traffic
Unless you are already a well-known brand, or do some form of direct advertising, the chances of a potential customer navigating directly to your website are lowwww. Sure, if your website address is on your business card or if you take out a television ad you will likely get some traffic directly to your site.
However, your chances of being seen on social media are much better. Your social media platforms can all guide visitors to your website. Also, it’s often easier to get users of Facebook and Twitter to visit your website than it is to rank on the first page on Google.
According to Hubspot, 84 percent of marketers reported that as little as six hours per week was enough effort to generate increased website traffic. Six hours is well worth the time considering the reach your business can achieve on a marketing tool as large as social media.
Remember, more website traffic means more potential leads and more conversions. So it’s important to use your social media profiles to encourage your followers to visit your website.
2. Easy and Direct Communication with Customers
Social media facilitates direct communication with your customers. It only takes a minute or two to post your company’s latest news, new product or service offerings, sales and special deals, and upcoming events.
Customers can likewise initiate conversations with you and your business. Often, when customers have a question about a product or service that your company offers, they will use social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, as a first point of contact.
Be sure to monitor your channels for customer comments and questions very regularly.
It’s important to reply very promptly to all inquiries and comments on your social media channels.
Respond Appropriately to Comments
It’s also a very good idea to respond appropriately to comments on posts and reviews. Don’t be defensive if you get a negative comment or review. This will only make matters worse. Rather, reply in a professional, respectful and dignified way that may even turn that unhappy customer around. Try to be helpful, not angry or defensive.
Also, always reply to reviews, whether positive or negative. This shows you care as a company about your customer’s impressions.
Customer Service
Many companies today even use social media channels as a primary means of offering customer service. Buyers of products and services are encouraged to message customer service managers on Facebook and receive instant replies to questions and complaints.
You can easily implement a customer service hotline on social media for very little cost and effort.
3. Improved Brand Awareness
Even just getting your business’ name out there among both existing and potential new customers can be a huge advantage to your brand. Sure, as we will see below, the end result you should aim for is more sales. However, you don’t need to always jump right into that objective. In fact, by far, most people very much dislike being sold to right away.
A much more effective strategy is to begin by helping potential customers become familiar with your name, what you have to offer, and how you can benefit them.
Being successful in business, and respected by your customers, begins with building trust.
An effective way to build trust is to engage is meaningful and relevant conversations with your social media visitors and followers. But this not something that happens over night or even over a month! It takes a lot of effort — and time — to build trust. The effort, though, is very much well worth it.
In fact, before you do build trust, you will have a challenging road toward making sales.
4. Lower Marketing Costs
Facebook and Twitter advertising offer easy, lower-cost alternatives to traditional marketing options. Consider this:
According to WebFX,
- A 30-second TV ad averages about US$342,000
- A single national circulation magazine ad runs about US$250,000
- The average newspaper ad will cost you US$113,000
A report by the well respected SEO operation Moz indicates that the cost to reach 1,000 people via a newspaper ad is US$32.00, whereas for a Facebook ad, it’s a mere 25 cents! That is an gargantuan difference.
And this is for paid advertising. Much of what you can do on social media to drive traffic and increase brand exposure and sales can be done for free! You can engage with customers, and potential new ones, for only the cost of the salary of your company’s social media manager.
Targeted Advertising
What’s more, television, radio, magazine and newspaper ads are not targeted, meaning you can’t direct them toward a specific potential set of customers. Anyone and everyone who reads that newspaper may see your ad, even if it’s not of the slightest interest to them. For many readers or viewers of traditional media, ads are simply ignored because they don’t address the needs or wants of a particular set of buyers.
Social media advertising IS targeted, however. With Facebook and Twitter ads, for example, you can employ user demographics to narrow down your audience. Then, you can deliver your ads to viewers specifically potentially interested in your product or service.
5. More Sales
The bottom-line goal of every business is increasing profits, which is accomplished through increasing revenue. In order to gain more revenue, you have to earn more sales. Social media has been shown to improve the ability to nurture leads into sales.
Forbes reports that social media has a medium to high impact on increasing sales.
How to Be Seen on Social Media Platforms
Following are some tips on how to best reap the benefits of social media for business. There are no guarantees but carefully considering these tips will improve your chances of being appreciated by your fellow social media users.
In the following, “posting” can mean anything from posting to your own social media platforms, replying to comments on your posts, or commenting on the posts of other brands’ social media.
Always Post Quality Content
In business, image is critically important. So, if you’re going to use social media to present your business’ image to the world, it’s vital that you always present well. Posting with poorly written content full of grammar and spelling mistakes is not going to do you much good.
Proofread Before Posting
Before posting to social media, or to your own website for that matter, always proofread your writings very carefully. Check for spelling, capitalization, and punctuation errors.
Better yet, hire a professional proofreader to to this for you. Even if you are a good writer, it’s hard to catch your own grammar and spelling mistakes.
Stick to the Topic
An effective way to be seen on social media is to comment on other people’s posts. This is perfectly legitimate and in fact, you should welcome others to comment on YOUR posts.
But be sure to always stick to the topic of both the page (Facebook, Twitter, etc. when posting comments. You should always actually read the post when making comments or, if you are posting, write on the topic of the platform. If the post is on improving your smart phone photography and your comment is on the high price of iPhones, you will be ignored at best. You may even be banned from the page.
Engage with Users Often
This includes both on your own social media pages as well as when making comments on others’.
Social media engagement is really all about a conversation. Be sure to post regularly. On Facebook, you should post at least once a day, and on Twitter, at least twice daily. These are not hard rules, but rather recommendations to get started. As you gain more experience in using social media, you will learn how to gauge what your visitors desire and can adjust your posting accordingly.
One rule you should always follow, however, is to reply to comments on your posts in a timely manner, perhaps with 24 hours, or, if you have an active page, 12 hours.