As a business owner, you’re always looking for ways to make your business better and your social media thrive.
Whether it’s through marketing, more staff, new products, a new website among many other methods.
One potential avenue to grow businesses is often ignored.
Especially among small business owners and that is the importance of a corporate social media presence.
Sometimes it’s difficult to appreciate the role social media can play in the growth of the company.
It’s time to ignore the trees and see the forest.
Here are five ways that social media can help businesses grow and thrive.
1. Leads and the landscape
Anyone who’s paying attention knows that the landscape of business is changing.
Brick-and-mortar stores are giving way to online shopping and purchases, regardless of the industry.
The digital economy is a reality, instead of a physical location, many consumers view a company’s digital presence as its storefront.
This ranges from a reliable website, visibility on search engines like Google and yes, a robust social media presence.
Part of this presence is direct advertising.
A recent study found that 78% of small businesses attracted new customers through social media advertising.
Social media ads can be directly targeted to people with an interest in your products and services.
So people that are potentially your customers will know that your company fills their needs.
Through the use of hashtags and other forms of social listening and connection, you can make sure that posts by your company reach those who are interested in your products and services.
Ultimately, reaching more people that need what you offer this landscape will get you more leads and more business.
2. A Human Face
It’s one thing to understand that the new digital landscape can lead you to more potential customers.
However, these same customers use social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to express their personality.
With that said, it’s very easy to notice when businesses are “going through the motions”.
Simply throwing robot-like advertising that serves the same purpose as print advertising.
Social media allows your company to express in more ways than traditional advertising can.
This alone can help your social media thrive and hit new heights!
For example, a few years ago Wendy’s, the fast-food chain, used its social media presence to playfully make fun of its competitors as well as it’s customers.
This campaign not only gave Wendy’s followers a laugh; it allowed customers to feel closer to a large corporation through its wit.
In addition, the personal connection possible through social media is also a good way to:
- show off your products
- services
- employees (see Walt Disney World for a great example of this)
- and maintain customer service
Traditional marketing makes it easy for customers to know what you sell; but also tells the customer very little about who you are as a business.
By nature, social media platforms are more geared towards who your company is; rather than what it does.
Social media puts a human face on your business.
3. Building a Community
Putting a human face to your business also allows you to build a strong, vibrant, and active community with your followers and potential customers.
So as more people see your social media presence and see that your company is knowledgeable, interesting, and fill their needs; they will connect with other members who share this interest.
As these connections grow wider and stronger not only will this lead to more business transactions; but your following can be mobilized in any number of ways.
For example, a strong following can do great things in terms of charity.
Or, promoting the values which are important relevant to your organization.
Doing this allows your business to be directly connected to improving the lives it serves.
Making your business more relatable and connecting it to community improvement has the pleasant side effect in many cases of producing brand loyalty.
People often do repeat business with companies they like and trust.
So, used properly, social media can be a powerful tool.
Once the positive connection is made between a person and the company, this relationship can last for years.
Strong communities built over social media not only widen but deepen a business’s transaction base.
4. Traffic on the Highway
The Internet is sometimes called “the information superhighway”.
As such visitors to a website are appropriately called “traffic”.
The more robust the social media presence for your company.
The more traffic is driven to you.
Directly, the more people see your advertising and social media profiles on the various platforms; the more visitors will ultimately visit your website.
This increased traffic will without a doubt help your bottom line.
Indirectly, a social media presence will connect your business with many keywords relevant to your industry on search engines such as Google.
This will make your organization much more visible when searchers are looking for products and services in your particular industry.
5. Fancy Numbers
Many social media platforms offer businesses a vast suite of statistical insights.
And when you know your customers, you know what they want.
These statistics are the best source of information for product development, content creation, and future advertising.
These insights commonly include how many people have interacted with your profile and specific posts.
Also, they share how these interactions happened, where they came from, and a bunch of other useful data.
So if something works; keep doing it.
However, if something doesn’t work; go in a different direction.
Use these insights to let you know what to change.
But you may not know where to start.
The world of social media can be intimidating as well as time-consuming.
Content must be:
- produced consistently
- be relevant to your business
- keep the interest of visitors
- showcase your products and services.
This requires a very focussed, thought-out strategy.
However, this effort can take your time away from other parts of your business.
And not everybody is adapted to marketing a business in the digital space.
A social media manager or management team can help these issues.
At Rycob, our social media management team will work with you and your company every step of the way to create a social media strategy that you will be proud of.
Your community will build, your traffic will increase, and your business will thrive.
