Best for Business: 10 Benefits of Social Media

05 Sep Best for Business: 10 Benefits of Social Media

Best for Business: 10 Benefits of Social Media

If you’re a marketer for business, chances are you already know social media needs to be a part of your strategy. However, you might be unsure of just how critical social media can be to your marketing program’s success. Here are some of the reasons your business needs to seriously step up their social media efforts:

1. Increase brand awareness – Make it easier for customers to find you, and communicate with you. A study by The Social Habit shows that 53 percent of Americans who follow brands on social are more loyal to those brands.

2. Run targeted ads and see the results in real-time – Social ads are inexpensive and offer powerful targeting tools for distributing your message and content. Facebook and LinkedIn both offer several demographics for targeting, and you can view and measure results in real-time.

3. Gain critical customer insights – Every day there are over 500 million Tweets, 4.5 billion Likes on Facebook, and 95 million photos and videos uploaded to Instagram. What’s behind all these numbers? A wealth of information about your customers, that you can apply to your business decisions.

4. Increase your web traffic and search rankings – One of the biggest benefits of a sound social media strategy is an increase in website traffic. Not only does social media help direct people to your website, but the more social media shares you receive, the higher you can expect your search rankings to go.

5. Generate better-converting leads – Many first-class companies rate social media as the most effective way to identify key decision makers and find new business opportunities.

6. Improve customer service – Learn about dissatisfied customers quickly, and build a strong reputation for customer satisfaction by responding directly.

7. Stay relevant – Part of staying in business is staying relevant. Social media not only gives your company a view into how it can better deliver for your customers, it keeps you present in an environment where your competitors are too.

8. Get instant feedback – The good and the bad! You need to know if your company has customers that are unhappy with any product or service your business provides. See point #6 for what you can do to leverage even a bad experience.

9. Decrease overall marketing costs – According to Hubspot, 84% of marketers found they were able to see increased website traffic with as little as six hours a week spent on social media. Spending one hour a day on free or low-cost social channels can accomplish the same outcomes as forms of paid advertising.

10. Engage people at events – Does your company use events, conferences, or festivals for marketing? If so, make sure you’re integrating social media – the easiest way is to develop a hashtag for your specific event.

These results are just the beginning of the benefits you’ll see when utilizing a strategic social media plan for your business. Not sure where to start? Let Current Wave Marketing develop a plan for success.