5 Benefits of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing may be one of the newest ways of boosting online sales, but it can be one of the most effective techniques when done properly. Not only does social media provide the potential to market your products and services to an audience of millions for FREE, it is also proving to be one of the most effective channels for communicating with customers.
Below, we’ve listed five reasons how social media marketing can help an online business.
1. Boost Brand Awareness
When a social media user (let’s call him John) engages with your content, perhaps by Liking, commenting or sharing it, his followers will often be alerted to this action. When this happens, there’s the potential for hundreds of new people to be exposed to your brand. Let’s say one of John’s contacts, Ryan, now engages with the content as well. Now all Ryan’s followers could also be alerted. This creates a snowball effect that other marketing type can’t match.
It’s relatively common for business content to be seen by millions of people as a result of this snowball effect. This sensation is called ‘going viral’ and costs businesses nothing, apart from the man hours put into making the content. It’s what every business on social media hopes for each time they click ‘post’.
2. Customer Service
Social media provides a platform for businesses to deliver customer service in the public eye. At first, it might sound bad that there’s a platform for customers to complain in public, but if your customer service staff can deal with the problem effectively it can have a really positive effect on the brand.
3. Feedback From Customers
By taking note of the feedback received on their social media profile and monitoring what kind of social media posts get the most engagement, it’s possible to business owners to learn so much about their target audience. Many business use social media to directly ask questions to customers and make important decisions based on the feedback.
4. SEO
While Google has kept the inner workings of its search engine results page algorithm secret, many SEO experts have discovered evidence that social media shares play a key role to a web page’s search ranking.
Once you’ve built a strong following, sharing your web content on your business’ own social media profiles is the easiest way to get a lot of shares - and reportedly send the content rocketing up the Google rankings.
5. Social Proof
While business owners have dismissed social media as ‘a fad’ that ‘won’t work in our industry’, the truth is social media marketing has become so ubiquitous that many consumers will use a brand’s presence on social media as a signal of their quality.
If a brand has a lot of followers on social media, that’s a sign of a company that can be trusted to many people, especially young people.
