As a business owner you can be inundated with activities that eat into your time and there are certainly many tasks that take priority over social media: winning new business, satisfying customer needs, fulfilling orders, working with suppliers and doing the books to name but a few. With all of these activities demanding your attention, why does social media for business really matter today?
You Can Build Relationships
By leveraging social media for your business you provide a platform, a community, where your customers can come together and engage with you as well as with each other to share the news about your blossoming social media presence. You can quickly build a community around your brand that is both engaging and cost effective.
You Can Get Valuable Customer Insights
Social media channels have analytics tools available. You will be able to track the number of interactions with fans and see exactly what your audience looks like in terms of key demographics, gender, age, location and more.
It helps Your Search Engine Optimization.
Once your content is shared via Social Media, those links are there to stay. Even better, if people do visit your site and share that information with their friends, you’ll then have more links coming back into your site. Search Engines love links, and the more valuable links they see coming back to your site, then the higher up the Search Rankings you go. If a piece of content has been shared amongst the social media community, Retweeted and liked, you’re likely to notice more search engine referrals for it as well.
Social Media Provides Great Brand Exposure.
By keeping up with your social media campaign you are giving your brand great exposure. If you find that you get a positive response on social media sites, but can’t translate this into referrals, then there’s nothing wrong with asking why. Reaching out and connecting with people is one of the core foundations of social media. The more you ask the more you can learn and can put into practice the next time around.
It Can Enhance Your Reputation
Make a point to monitor the social networks for use of your name or brand, that way if anyone is talking about you, good or bad, you can join the conversation and add your take on things, thereby protecting and enhancing your brand reputation in the process.
The Internet is Social.
Social Media is not a fad and won’t be going away any time soon. In the last year we have seen new social media platforms like Google+, Instagram and Pinterest accumulate millions of new users over night. Google decided to use Google+ as the hub of their local business centre offering, making it clear that social media will be even more important for businesses moving forward.
Over the last few years, social media has mushroomed, and in years to come although the popular sites and formats may change, being able to comment on articles, share opinions and reply to whoever you choose to are elements that we have all become used to. If one thing’s for certain, it is that the general public and Internet users will not be silenced!
Using small business social media as part of a well structured campaign is definitely worth it! There are lots of huge positives, so if it isn’t working for you today just tweak your methods slightly and try something new.
With any social media campaign, the more you give, the more you receive. As you build up your credibility and your online presence, your community will increase and you will see a rise in the levels of engagement you receive resulting in more targeted referrals back to your website, more leads, and more sales.
There are no guarantees with social media. What works wonders for one company may not even generate a whisper online for your business. Ultimately you just need to remember one thing:
Nobody cares for your business, they care about you!
If you can, translate that into conversations and relationships. It’s then that you will see the results.
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