It is hardly news that social media is an incredibly popular vehicle for communication, interaction and engagement. It touches the vast majority of people in some way, from personal conversation to interaction with school, work, health providers, the government and much more. While it will certainly evolve, as it constantly has, social media will only become more influential in our society and our lives. This absolutely applies to businesses, as well.

Why Social Media for Businesses?

If your business is not leveraging the power of social media, it already is a step behind at least some of the competition. The reason is simple, but extremely important: social media is a key, if not the biggest influencer for many people when making a purchase decision. And this applies to B2B, as well as B2C. Seventy-four percent of shoppers make buying decisions based on social media, according to Sprout Social (May 2017). Lack of a social media business strategy is a missed opportunity.

The Benefits of Social Media

1. Advertising

Social media advertising is a rapidly growing and extremely powerful way to reach, engage and move customers to action. The benefits include:

• Lower Ad Costs – Compared to traditional advertising, social media costs can be much lower. Plus, it’s easily managed in real time, rapidly scalable and rich with metrics.
• Highly Targetable – You have a far greater ability to target just the people you want to reach, which saves money, improves effectiveness and enhances your ability to finely tune your message and creative for each sub-audience.
• Immediate Performance Metrics – Social media and the Internet enable you to track and analyze extensive information about your advertising campaign in real time. This gives you the power to make rapid changes, take advantage of opportunities and avoid wasted efforts. Last but not least, it’s important for businesses of all types to understand that social media ads are only getting more prevalent and smarter. Social media advertising is where the future is headed. The question is, are you a part of it?

2. Awareness

One of the great advantages of social media is its ability to enhance brand awareness. It is manageable and efficient to get your brand message in front of many different audiences and people. By selecting the right social media vehicles and implementing effective campaigns, you can find your customers and move them to action.

3. Build Website Traffic

You can effectively build your inbound website traffic utilizing social media. But it’s not just traffic. When properly implemented social media campaigns create inbound traffic of the right visitors – those who want to find your product or service.

4. Enhanced SEO

Social media is an important element in search engine optimization. Google and others take social media activity into account when ranking a page. While there is debate about how exactly this works and to what extent, most social media and Internet marketing experts agree that social media activity positively impacts a business’s page ranking.

5. Better Conversion Rates

In addition to driving more people to your website, social media can also grow the number of conversions. When people on social media sites are talking positively about your business, products or services, it influences others. In addition to informing people who may not know about your offering, they hear a positive message from an independent source, which is often more influential.

6. Higher Customer Satisfaction

Social media can significantly increase the two-way communication and engagement between you and your customers. In addition to giving you invaluable information about what your customers want, awareness of concerns or problems, market trends and more, your customers will feel more “listened to” and appreciated. That all adds up to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Social media marketing can be a powerful, high-value component of a well-planned integrated marketing program.