With Facebook recently reaching the milestone of 3 billion users, it’s easy to see that social media is more popular than ever before. However, if you thought social media was just for socialising with your friends, then think again.
The Advantages of Social Media for Businesses
Social media is also a very powerful tool for businesses which allows them to reach audiences they would typically struggle with using traditional methods such as television. This form of digital advertising has opened the door to a new world of marketing and communication with customers. To understand the power of social media, it’s important to look at the advantages of how social media can benefit businesses. Since we’ve used social media to help boost numerous clients reputation and brand image, we thought we’d put together a handy guide on the top advantages.
Here are the top advantages of social media for businesses.
Helps Increase Brand Awareness and Recognition
Millions of people spend a lot of time on social media every single day. With so many people on one platform, it makes it the perfect place to get your businesses name out there. Every time a user interacts with a businesses social media profile whether it’s a like or comment, the majority of the time their friends will be informed on their timeline.
This interaction from users helps spread the businesses brand and increase awareness amongst other users. Seeing one of your friends “like” a new business or share their page will only naturally raise interest. If they like a brand or business, then the chances are you might like them too. As simple as it may sound, social media does a good job of promoting businesses socially by encouraging users to share content with their friends.
Many businesses have taken this concept on board and have created unique content which has brought them thousands of interactions from users. When something gets a lot of attention and “goes viral” then a lot of media outlets also pick up on the story. This gives businesses double the exposure and free advertising to millions of people.
Take the American food chain Wendy’s and their social media “roastings”. Wendy’s has a big following on Twitter and customers often ask them questions about their stores and competitors. Instead of answering seriously Wendy’s have become known for roasting anyone who bad talks them. You might think this sounds like a bad idea, but it’s actually been a huge success and generated them lots of media interest and thousands of retweets and shares.
Increase Traffic
Social media is also a fantastic way to drive lots of targeted traffic to a businesses website. Many social media platforms allow businesses to add their contact information such as their website to their profile. This means when a user ends up on a business’s profile from seeing them on their timeline; they are much more likely to visit the businesses website. Not only does this increase the chance of the user converting, but it also means free traffic for the business.
A lot of businesses also use social media to push and promote their content to followers. Whether they have a blog full of news or just produce exciting content for users, social media is the perfect place to attract lots of readers.
Generate More Leads and Conversions
Although social media is often used by businesses to increase their online presence and brand awareness, it can, in fact, help increase conversions. Direct product promotion through social media is a great way to help generate more sales and conversions by getting your products and services noticed. Many online retailers do a fantastic job of this by promoting individual products to their users instead of waiting for them to visit their website.
By showing the world what they have to offer, it’s a much more direct approach than promoting their website instead. In addition to this, the journey to the checkout is also much shorter. By linking directly to a product, you are taking away the hard part of finding the product out of the journey. Sometimes customers are too lazy to find specific products and prefer it if you find them instead. By promoting your own products and services on social media, customers are a lot more likely to convert when they see something they like.
Better Customer Service
Many years ago customer service was often done privately through emails or phone calls with customers. Today social media has changed all of that and companies now utilise the power of social media to give customers the best customer experience. Customers who typically used to wait days for a reply now expect a reply within a few hours. Thanks to the growth of social media, this is expected as standard from a lot of businesses with many being judged on their response times.
If a customer has a problem or complaint, then social media will often be the first place they will turn to. If they’ve had a bad experience with a certain business, then they’ll want to tell as many people as possible. How a business responds to these public complaints will affect their brand image. Many complaints are quickly resolved for everyone to see on the public profile. From a business and brand image perspective, there’s nothing better than showing that you care about customers and solve their problems.
Users can also leave a rating that automatically translates into a star rating for businesses. This star rating is often an indication of how good a business is and a lot of customers take the rating into consideration before purchasing. By delivering excellent customer service, this will naturally increase a business’s star rating. Many businesses use this to their advantage by focusing on delivering fantastic customer service to outrank their competitors.
Cost Effective Advertising
The final advantage of using social media for business is that it is some of the most cost effective advertising you will ever get. Setting up a profile on social media platforms is completely free and considering the amount of traffic and sales it can bring, it’s definitely a no-brainer. By setting up various profiles across multiple social networks, the amount of traffic a business can receive from social media is often significant.
As you can see, there are plenty of advantages of using social media with businesses. With the amount of benefits they offer for free, it’s clear why using social media for businesses has become so popular.