Social media for businesses isn’t an option. All businesses must have an online presence and be able to be found on social media by potential clients and customers. Social media can help your business increase brand awareness, boost engagement, and promote sales and conversions. Social media is one of the most important marketing tools to help you find our customers where they spend much of their free time.
If you’re not using social media in your digital marketing strategy, you should be missing out on an inexpensive and effective way to reach your audience. Here are the many reasons why social media is essential for small businesses.
Increases Brand Awareness
Organic social media and social media advertising can boost brand awareness. Remember, most of the world uses social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Social media allows your potential customers to discover new products and services without pushing them right in their faces. Instead, they’ll see your business’ posts in their feed, and they can choose whether to click it to learn more about what you offer.
Personalizes & Humanizes
Social media provides brands a unique opportunity to become more humanized. Modern consumers want to purchase from brands they know they can trust, which means brands must find ways to build relationships with their audience. You can use social media to build trust by humanizing your brand. Instead of only posting information about your products and services, you can show images of the people within your company. You can also show behind-the-scenes images and videos of what goes on at the company, as long as it might be interesting enough to engage your followers.
Additionally, you can create authentic brand posts that demonstrate your values, videos and photos with real people that show how the products work, and other types of posts that show how important your employees and customers are to the business.
Establish Thought Leadership
As we’ve mentioned, establishing trust is increasingly important for brands. Consumers are less likely to trust brands than they are real people, especially if that brand isn’t humanized or trying to build a personal connection with their audience. One way you can build trust is by offering insights and information through thought leadership. Social media offers people within the organization to become industry thought leaders to provide valuable information related to the industry that customers want to know about.
LinkedIn’s publishing platform takes thought leadership to a new level. Instead of relying on blogs, industry leaders can post opinion pieces on LinkedIn Pulse to generate interest in their brand while humanizing the company.
Additionally, companies can start a podcast and promote episodes on social media since listening to someone speak about a topic might be more engaging than reading a long article.
Keeps Your Brand in Front of the Audience
If you want to build effective relationships with customers, you need to be on the top of their minds when they’re thinking about your product or industry. Most people check social media at least a few times a day, giving you the perfect opportunity to connect with followers every time they check their notifications or mindlessly scroll through their feeds. By keeping your social media posts informative and entertaining, you can increase engagement and stay on top of mind so you’re the first business they think of when they need something you sell.
Increases Website Traffic
You’ve spent a lot of resources branding your business, designing, and website, and developing it to function just the right way. However, if your traffic isn’t increasing due, it might be time to invest in digital marketing strategies, such as SEO and social media marketing. Social media marketing and advertising are quick methods to help boost your website traffic. By sharing content from your blog or website to the different social channels, you can notify readers of new blog topics as soon as they’re posted online.
Lead Generation
If you want to grow your business, you’ll have to generate leads. Social media offers an easy way to start generating interest in your products and services. Many social media platforms offer advertising formats that allow you to build forms and easily collect information without having users go off-site to share their information with you. Lead generation ads are a great way to get people interested in your products and services while also allowing them to show an interest by sending you their information.
Increase Sales
Social media marketing can increase sales in several ways. Firstly, many social media platforms, such as Instagram, now allow people to shop directly on the app if a business sets up its own Instagram Shop. Now, customers can easily start shopping while they’re on social media instead of having to leave the app and visit the store’s website, shortening the length of the customer journey to improve conversion rates and increase sales.
Secondly, social media offers a variety of cost-effective advertising solutions to help you reach more people and promote your business, increasing sales for a fraction of the cost of other types of advertising, such as print ads.
Influencer Partnerships
You can’t have an influencer partnership without being active on social media. Social media makes it easy for small businesses to find and vet influencers who can help them grow their business and increase sales. With the help of an influencer, you can earn an audience’s trust and get them interested in your business. Additionally, since influencers’ followers trust them, getting someone with an engaged following to promote your brand can improve your PR efforts and bring more traffic to your website.
Analytics
Social media doesn’t only help you market to your customers; it helps you understand who your customers are. With social media analytics, you can learn everything you need to know about your followers to tailor advertising campaigns to their needs. There are tons of data available through social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram that can tell you the types of posts customers like the most and where your customers are located, allowing you to spend your marketing budget wisely.
