Social media marketing requires both strategy and creativity. While it may seem overwhelming, its importance cannot be overstated. It’s so important that >around 92% of marketers use social media as part of their marketing efforts. In addition to that, 78% of salespeople engaged in social media are outselling their peers who aren’t. Plus, its benefits extend far beyond increasing sales.
However, not all businesses are aware of the benefits of social media marketing. In fact, nearly 40% of small businesses don't use social media. Even more concerning is that an additional 16% are unlikely to use social media for business at all.
Clearly, there’s a disconnect between those who are seeing the benefits of social media and those struggling to get started. If the latter sounds like you, keep reading. You’re about to learn how social media marketing can help build your business. Some of the benefits you’ll learn about include:
Growing your brand awareness: Social media marketing will make it easy to spread the word about your products and mission.
Increasing your traffic: Using social media and linking it to your website will increase your traffic tremendously.
Promoting your products and services: This is ultimately why you invest in marketing, right?
Build A Foundation Of Social Media Skills For Your Business
Not sure where to start? If you’re looking to learn how to utilize social media marketing to grow your business, Actionable Marketing Institute has the perfect course for you.
Take AMI's Social Media Strategy Certification course to gain crucial social media marketing skills to run your social media successfully. This course gives you access to everything you need to create a results-driven social media strategy- including 8 premium templates, 11 video tutorials, and so much more!
Why is Social Media Important For Your Business?
In order to survive in a competitive market, you need to be aware of new trends in your industry. In fact, 72% of companies use social media data to make informed business decisions. So how can you rise up from the competition and ensure your business is doing everything it can to succeed? By using social media, of course. Below are 20 reasons why you should implement social media into your business’s marketing strategy.
1. Builds Brand Awareness and Recognition
Gaining brand awareness and brand recognition is one of any business’ most important marketing goals. That’s because consumers want to buy brands they recognize. Many shoppers even have certain degrees of brand loyalty, which leads to long-term business benefits. Thankfully, social media allows for easy and effective brand building.
Social media has a benefit over traditional media because it can get your brand in front of people much more quickly and easily. Furthermore, it gets your audience looking at your brand even when they aren’t thinking about your brand or product.
Tip: Pay attention to your profile and cover photos. A great way to create brand recognition is to place your logo often, yet strategically. You want to make sure that it’s not overwhelming or distracting.
Make sure the visual elements of your brand are well represented.
Take a look at Adidas' Twitter page. Adidas keeps their Twitter profile neat and clean. They place their recognizable logo on both their profile image and cover photo without being overbearing. This cover photo is especially effective because it showcases adidas’ products while enforcing their brand name.
2. Generates Conversation Around Your Brand
A strong social media marketing strategy will generate conversation about your brand, products, and partners.
Take this example from Xbox Game Pass on Twitter. They simply tweeted to announce the availability of one of their games on EA Play. By doing this, they received a great amount of feedback about their product. They also got people talking. Fans were having genuine conversations, all facilitated by social media.
Tip: Engage with your audience when they comment on your social media messages. Make sure they feel that there is a person behind the brand. Ensuring they feel like they’re not talking to a robot will give them a better perception of your company and make them feel more like a valued customer.
Focus on sharing content that naturally creates conversation. Some of those ways are to:
Give shout-outs to other companies you network and work with.
Solicit feedback about your products.
Ask open ended questions, then let the audience reply to get them actively involved.
3. Helps Understand Your Target Customers’ Interests
You need to know what your target customers are interested in if you’re going to try to reach them effectively. You can do this by monitoring their social conversations around certain topics. This is called social listening, and can help you understand what’s important to your audience while identifying trends they’re following. You may also learn about what they’re struggling with, which can help you create content addressing those pain points.
Take a look at Belk on Twitter. Their target audience’s interests align strongly with the women empowerment message portrayed in this tweet. By aligning themselves with the same value, they create a stronger bond with their target audience. If you’re unsure how to match your target customers’ interests, social listening can help.
Tip: Make it part of your daily routine to do some social listening and see what your target customers are talking about in your industry. If you want to take your social listening to the next level, check out Mention (the same social listening tool used by the CoSchedule team).
4. Provides Platforms to Tell Your Brand’s Story
Using social media is a great way to share your brand’s mission and share stories. Effective storytelling can have a great impact on your brand’s image. These stories can be simple or extensive depending on what you think will be most effective.
Take this Starbucks post for example. They chose to share a video that tells the story of a customer who had a heartwarming experience at a Starbucks drive-through. Not only did they show how they impacted one of their customers, but they also spread the message that their product (or service) is effective enough for someone to give them positive feedback.
Tip: Not all stories have to be long and complicated. You can tell impactful and clear stories by using a simple image. As long as it tells a good story, it can effectively help your business’s public image.
5. Helps You Gather Data About Your Audience
Audience research is similar to social listening. It searches the keywords your audience will be using, but it’s more focused on your specific product. You can use social media to gather this information.
Tip: Many social media platforms allow you to view the reach and insights of all your posts.
To view the insights on your Facebook page:
Go to the page that you are the admin of
Scroll down the “Manage Page” section on the left side of the screen
Click on “Insights”
Scroll down and click on “People” to see specific audience analytics
To view the insights on your Twitter page:
Go to the tweet you want to see the analytics for
Underneath the tweet, click on the “analytics” icon on the far right, or...
On your Twitter page, click on the “More” tab on the left side of your screen
Click on “Analytics” to see broad metrics that aren’t specific to any post
To view the insights on your Instagram page on the mobile app:
Go to your profile
Click on the “Insights” button
Scroll down to “Your Audience” and click on “See All”
6. Helps Provide Responsive Customer Service
Customers now expect companies to handle their requests through social media. A strong investment in customer service can build meaningful relationships between your company and your customers. With social media, the challenge of customer service remains as demanding as it had before.
Social media allows for immediate interaction and customer feedback. Businesses can also respond to their customers right away. 71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on a social media platform said they were more likely to recommend that brand to the people they know, so having a social media customer service strategy is extremely important.
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