Social media plays a very important role in the growth of a business. With more and more people joining social media sites and using them regularly/efficiently, the social media industry is bound to become bigger in the coming years. It’s booming like never before. Yes, the social media wave isn’t ending anytime soon. And your business should take advantage of it if you want it to survive. With such amazing growth, every business today needs to leverage proper social media channels in the best possible way. Not because it’s the “in thing”, and not because it sounds simple, but because their target audience is hanging around the popular social networks. And they’re engaging with their favorite brands and connecting with them on different levels. By giving your business brand the social media touch, you not only generate more business but also connect with your customers better and serve them on a higher level. It actually provides you a digital platform to connect with people.
Leverage Social Advertising
Social media advertising may be the new kid on the block, but it’s growing faster than imagined. Take Facebook Ads for example. Even though the social network launched ads in 2005, it managed to reach 9.16B in ad revenue in the first quarter in 2017. This just goes on to show that social advertising is here to stay — for a long, long time. As more and more businesses successfully experimenting with digital advertising, they’re realizing that taking the social media advertising route makes total sense. Here’s why:
- Lower ad costs: When compared to traditional advertising methods such as print media, TV and radio advertising, social ads are not only dependable, but also cheaper. What’s more, you’re allowed to engage on various social media channels for free before scaling with paid ads. You’re free to grow on your own, at your own pace.
- Targeted reach: Traditional advertising doesn’t give you the luxury to reach out to your target audience the way social media ads do. When you’re doing offline advertising, you’re taking the blind, shotgun approach where your returns are dismal even if you’re making big investments. Using social media ads you reach out to targeted prospects, increase your conversions and ultimately get a higher return on investment.
- Real-time performance analysis: Knowing if your ad is working or not is integral in order to improve it. With offline advertising, you’re unable to analyze the performance of your ad campaign and it massively cripples your efforts. Social media ads on the other hand allow you to constantly keep track of how well (or how bad) your ad is performing. You’re able to change your ad on the fly and instantaneously see the results.
Last but not the least, it’s important for businesses of all types to understand that social media ads are not only getting bigger and smarter but it is the future of advertising. A new wave for a new era. The question is, are you a part of it?
Boost Brand Awareness
Social media proves to be a powerful tool when it comes for brand awareness. There are businesses who dismiss it as a way to build a brand, but by doing that, they’re leaving an open ground for competitors. On the other hand, many reputable chief marketing officers agree that social media has a definite impact on brand awareness.
Increasing your brand awareness via social media isn’t rocket science. Here are a few tips on how you can do so.
- Find Your Audience: Before you start focusing on a particular social platform, find out whether your target audience is on it. You can do this by searching for relevant conversations about your product or industry. For example, a B2B company may find their audience on LinkedIn rather than on Facebook. Don’t just assume or follow other brands.
- Use Visuals: Once you know where your target audience is, it’s time to grab their attention by using eye-catching visuals with your content. Images and videos play a big role in helping you grow your brand awareness on social media channels. Because they not only increase engagement but also boost social shares.
- Create Conversations: Social media is all about building conversations. If you use these social platforms for one-way communication, you’ll only grab so much attention. Instead, talk and listen. Get involved. Showcase your personality by conversing, tagging and mentioning others.
- Measure Your Efforts: Don’t just aim in the dark. Use the tracking tools provided by the platforms (eg: Facebook Page Insights) along with other external tools such as URL shorteners, Google Analytics, etc. to measure your social media activity. Use the insights you gain to understand what’s working so that you can optimize your efforts and build a stronger brand with social media.
- Build Authority: If you want a higher engagement rate along with better brand awareness, then work on building your authority by sharing real value. Along with borrowed content, your content you post should also have something original, as it adds to your credibility.
Remember, every single step that you take to increase brand awareness with social media will impact the overall growth of your business in the long run.
Enhance Brand Loyalty
A lot of businesses are stuck on their follower count, which is nothing but a vanity number. It doesn’t serve a real purpose if the followers aren’t loyal to your brand. There’s a difference between a random follower and loyal one, because the latter adds real value.
If you want to get the most out of your social media marketing efforts, it’s crucial that you focus on increasing brand loyalty. Having a loyal following means better engagement and better conversations.
Ask any loyal social media follower about their trusted brand, and they will speak positive about it without the need to push. Which leads to natural word of mouth marketing.
You can enhance brand loyalty on social media by:
- Having a Solid Social Media Strategy: Social media platforms are evolving, and each has its own personality. Facebook is not Twitter, and Twitter is definitely not LinkedIn. You need to formulate a social media strategy that clearly aligns your goals with other areas such as content marketing, search engine optimization, etc. This should give you a fair idea of what type of value you can create for your loyal social media followers. It’ll allow you to not only retain them but also help them spread the word.
- Sharing Value-Oriented Content: There’s a reason why your followers are loyal to you. They’re looking for value, which you will have to deliver at all times by sharing quality content. For example, sharing a detailed case study is much better than a 500 word article. The more useful and relevant the content you post, the better. Plan how and what type of content you would like to share with your following. By spending time on strategizing your content creation, your content will fetch you a higher ROI when you share it. So don’t rush. See what sets your content apart from others. For example, visual content gets more shares than regular social media content.
- Being Consistent: Your brand has a personality, and certain aspects that are unique to it. By identifying these personality traits and by bringing them out, it gets easier to connect to your target audience. Your aim should be to be consistent in your approach and maintain the same voice throughout your interactions. The content that you create/share along with how you converse with others should reflect your brand’s personality.
- Responding to Queries: You may not be a celebrity for your social media followers, but they do look up to you for answers. So when they approach you with a relevant query, you should get back to them with the right answers. This way they will know that you are the real deal. And that your business actually cares about others. But don’t limit your answering adventures to your loyal followers. Go out there and hunt for questions that have partial answers or no answers. You can search using targeted keywords and look for questions that need a response. By answering these questions, you establish yourself as an expert or an authority.
Show the Human Side
While it’s okay to automate your social media posting with a tool like Buffer, it’s not-so-okay to keep doing it. Personally interacting with other people and humanizing your brand will go a long way. It will keep your followers/fans keep coming back for more.
A lot of businesses try to present themselves as big corporations, which is a mistake. People need people, not auto bots. Even if it’s just for the sake of interacting.
Conclusion
The importance of social media in business can only be understood once you start applying what we discussed. If done right, in the long run, social media marketing can prove to be really cost effective. Because as of today, even the paid social media campaigns, such as Facebook Ads, are cheaper than other advertising options such as search engine ads. Jumping on the social media bandwagon is no longer a matter of choice if you want to succeed. Your business needs it. Every business needs it. The importance of social media in business is now more prominent than ever.
Author info- This article is contributed by Shume Banerjee who is a content writer with LegalRaasta- an online platform for Trademark registration.
Recommended for you
Leave a Reply
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.