For years, social media has been seen as a marketing fad. Naysayers have declared that social media is for individuals, not businesses.
Nowadays, however, it will be very difficult to claim that social media is a fad that is here today and forgotten tomorrow. For one, the world’s most famous and best brands have kept strong social media presence.
But the most telling thing that social media is here to stay is that it is used both by your customers and by business owners. We see how social media sites boast of more and more users every month, and most business leaders would agree that social media is a great marketing tool. According to a 2011 HBR poll of 2,000 senior executives, only 11% said that business use of social media is a fad.
But why should you get into social media? Here are seven reasons:
1. Gain exposure for your business
Facebook has around 750 million users, while Twitter has around 200 million users. That is just for the two biggest social networks. Google+ is catching up, and quickly at that. Your customers and prospects are on social media, so why isn’t your business?
2. Personal recommendations are more powerful than any marketing blurb or collateral
With all the advertising and marketing going on right now, most people trust their friends and family when they want to try out something new or if they are looking for products and services. After this, they rely on third-party services such as a newspaper or magazine articles or a review site, to gauge if your business is worth trying.
Social media makes it easier for your customers to recommend your service. They could tweet about you or like your Facebook page. That tweet or like would be displayed on their walls and be seen by their contacts. The result: you get recommended even without beating people over the head with your marketing!
3. Top of mind recall is easy to cultivate on social media
Let’s say that you are a webmaster and you have used three different SEO companies in the past. Only one of them has an active presence on Facebook. That SEO companies in turn write blogs and articles and share these with their contacts on their Facebook page.
You log onto Facebook and you see their posts, clicked on some of them and read some. You learned quite a lot from their posts. Now imagine that you needed SEO services. Out of three companies, who do you think would you contact this time around?
Social media gives businesses the opportunity to gain top-of-mind recall by making it easy to create or participate in discussions with your customers. This kind of recall is really important in gaining new business or getting a repeat customer.
4. Engaging your customer
After the customer makes his or her purchase, it is important that you have an open channel to communicate. The best thing with social media is that the communication between you and your customer does not necessarily have to start with you, your customer can initiate it.
Social media helps you build a relationship with your customers. Go beyond selling and really talk to your followers. This way, you gain credibility as a person first and then as a business next.
Once you have engaged customers, it is very easy to turn them into loyal customers and then into brand advocates. Why do you need brand advocates? Because these are the customers who would defend and recommend your brand and products on their own will.
5. Get higher search engine rankings
With Google’s Panda update, social mentions have become an important signal to gauge the relevance and popularity of your page. This means that the more your page or blog post is shared on social networks, the easier it is to rank high on search results.
You can use your social media profiles to share your blog posts and new Web pages and that’s one social mention. But the real benefit comes from getting these shares seen by your followers and contacts, and having them read these and share these themselves!
6. Social media is another channel for a lot of business functions
If you think that social media is only great for marketing your products and services, then you are wrong!
Social media is a great place to generate leads for your sales. It can also act as a public relations tool, as well as a venue for customer service!
7. Other business benefits
Social networking allows business owners to find both employees and business partners.
Because social media is largely free to use, your marketing expenses will be greatly reduced. But be aware that social media campaigns are not free per se. You will need to spend time and money in making sure everything is in place and everything is covered. If a question comes up about your business on social media, you must be able to answer it promptly. You would also need to spend for content and manpower.
SEO Inc. is a search engine optimization company offering Search Engine Marketing Services to any business looking for that edge over their competition. They specialize in custom crafted solutions for all industries in the areas of Link Building, Social Media Consulting, and many others. Find out more and connect with Search Engine Optimization, Inc. on Facebook
