Why You Should Use Social Media for Your Business

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In recent months we have seen how social signals are becoming an important part of search engine optimization. There is no doubt that a well planned social media strategy makes or takes down a brand.

For example, Lady Gaga (personal branding) quickly became a smash hit, and social media played a major role in her rise to stardom. Regardless of whether your business is small or large, online or offline – social media provides a great opportunity and advantage for every business.

I have frequently written about social media in the past, but I’ve never really targeted my posts for small business owners who are looking to increase sales using the power of social media. So today I’ll be sharing some of the great benefits of using social media for your business, which will help you to decide whether or not social media channels might help to promote your business as it has so many others.

In the coming days, I will also be sharing more articles on how to create a presence on social media sites.  For now, let’s have a look at some of the most beneficial aspects of social media for business.

Social Media for businesses
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“Social media” is a name given to web-based and mobile technologies that are used to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. This interactive dialogue can occur between organizations, communities and individuals. The Internet allows millions of people to connect with each other, and also allows business owners to promote their businesses to people all over the world by using web-based applications.

We currently live in a world in which traditional advertising strategies aren’t enough. Social media not only allows for tremendous outreach and networking, but also allows for interactivity that can be very beneficial to businesses for a variety of reasons.

Surely you have noticed the shift from traditional advertising that has occurred with the increased use of the Internet over time. Now, people consume more advertising online than in print media, radio or television. (Example: See the ads when you play YouTube videos?)

Social media offers many benefits to business owners, as it allows them to reach out to their customers and to gain the attention of more people/potential customers. A recent Social Media Marketing Industry report has shown that social media enables businesses to get exposure, traffic and gain market insights.

Some direct benefits of using social media for business:

Using Social Media for business
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One thing which I highly recommend to every business owner is to maintain a website in the form of a landing page and a blog associated with it.

For example, a doctor can have a landing page where people can find information about him or her, and a blog associated with it which will help him/her to drive people from search engines. A blog will also allow the doctor to get social media shares, and thus more exposure.

Social media has become a vast and wide open canvas, and taking full advantage of it requires careful strategic planning.

When you are using social media for business, you should make sure to keep your social media profile updated consistently, and maintain a constant presence for your business’s exposure. Remember, “out of sight, out of mind” is very true where social media sites are concerned.

If you have been keeping an eye on the news from the e-commerce world, you may know how big Snapdeal (India’s largest online shopping site) has become very quickly, all thanks to a great online strategy. Companies are spending thousands of dollars per month to monitor their social media presence, engage with people, plan reputation management, and so on.

If you are a business owner and you are still not using social media sites like Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, LinkledIn, etc. to promote and develop your business, you are missing out on a very significant opportunity, and you are bound to be left behind, in the dust of other businesses that have climbed aboard this fast-moving train long ago.

Gaining traffic

Most people who own a business have come to realize how important it is to have a website to expand their reach from the ground to the vast expanse of the Internet.

You can easily create a website for your business, and you can allow customers to leave comments about your services. By replying to the comments or concerns customers leave, you can form a bond with your customers, while increasing traffic to your site.

Social media enhances this entire experience, and makes it vastly more visible.  The idea is not only to use social media for engagement, but also to drive users to your company’s business page, which will further educate users about your work and your services.

Interacting with your customers

Perhaps the most important thing social media can do for a business is to give business owners a way to engage customers in a whole new way. Social media allows you to get personal with your customers, and form a bond of trust with them. By replying to the concerns of your customers and asking for their opinions, you can enhance customer satisfaction while getting more traffic for your site, which further promotes your business.

You can share photos and videos via social media, keeping customers and potential customers updated as to your business’s current events and latest offerings. This helps in creating a strong bond with your customers, and in making them feel a connection with you and your business.

Increased sales

A good, strong social media strategy can require an investment, but as with any advertising campaign, the ROI (return on investment) is what needs to be considered. A good social media strategy will have a positive effect on sales as it increases the overall exposure of your business, gets people talking about your business or service, and exposes your products and/or services to a far wider audience. In the end, of course, the goal is to convert the user into a customer/ sales.  When you interact with your customers and you form a bond of trust with them, this illustrates interest in your customers and their experience, and frequently translates to further sales.

  • Read: Social recommendations vs. social ads

Reputation management

Anyone who has been involved in a business knows that a single negative comment can be more harmful than just about anything else. As has long been said, for every one dissatisfied vocal customer, you lose ten customers or potential customers. For this reason, any serious business with an online presence needs a reputation management team to monitor social media activity. This helps the business to track the level of satisfaction noted by customers via their comments, and also helps in solving user issues, thus enhancing the overall user experience.

For example, if you mention Airtel (Indian telecom) or any other popular brand in social media forums, you will get a nearly instant response or comment from someone associated with the company.

Maintaining the image of your business is very important. Clearly, negative comments and rumors of poor business practices can easily destroy the image of any business.  By keeping up with a strong and consistent social media presence, you can help to maintain the good reputation and strong image of your business. Through social media, you can easily reply to potentially destructive comments instantaneously, and help maintain the image of excellent customer service that you want your business to have.

Marketing research

Because social media is such an efficient way of connecting with people, you can use social media to conduct marketing research. You can conduct surveys or polls and you can ask people to offer reviews about your products or services. You can also see what your competitors are doing, which can be helpful in planning your own business strategies, such as what kind of service or product you should be launching next.

Inexpensive

Social media is very inexpensive when compared to other advertising and marketing tools available to individuals and businesses. The social media tools are free for everyone to use. By simply spending some time working on your social media presence for a few minutes a day, you can see great benefits of increased exposure and sales, and develop good relationships with your customers.

Traditional advertising and business promotion tools require the help of professionals.  Using social media tools, on the other hand, is very easy and inexpensive.

The reach is global

Traditional promotional tools can also be used to reach a global audience, but at very significant expense.  In contrast, using social media tools provides a very inexpensive means of reaching a global audience in a flash! If your content goes viral, then there is no telling how many people it will reach, and it’s pretty much free!

Social media is all about getting targeted people to join and interact with your business page or profile. It is important to follow common social media practices such as continuous sharing, breaking news, questions, humor, etc. to bring the consistent conversation to your page.

Read:

Save on advertising:

You may already be familiar with the benefits of banner advertising and its enhancement of brand awareness.  The same is true with social media sites.

Every social media site allows you to add an avatar, which is technically your brand mascot, logo or anything which describes your company. When people constantly see updates on their timeline in Facebook or on Twitter, etc., about your business and your products and services, you are enhancing the brand awareness for your company.

You can consider lowering your advertising budget when you concentrate on social media marketing plans. Moreover, traditional ads are a one-time investment for a one-time gain, but with a social media presence, your subscribers/followers will give you long-term benefits.

Selecting the right social media platform for your growth is a very important part of the strategic plan of any business today. For example, Facebook fan pages are very effective for the creation of an engaging community. Here you can learn how to create a Facebook page for your business.

If you are a small business owner and have no budget for hiring a social media specialist or company, not to worry.  You can use social media tools like Hootsuite and Buffer App which support various social media networks, and allow you to manage everything from one page.

Click here to grab a 30-day free trial of Hootsuite Pro 

Businesses large and small are turning to social media as an outreach to potential customers worldwide, to advertise their products and services, and to engage with customers. You can start using social media by creating a website for your business, and/or by using various social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, etc. beginning today!

If you find the information in this post useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.
 

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

10 thoughts on “Why You Should Use Social Media for Your Business”

  1. Kieran Rourke

    Blog give more exposure to your website. But content and topic of blog should be such that it attracts visitors attention.

  2. Fannie

    With the increasing influence of social signals as a ranking factor now it makes sense webmasters start paying more attention to getting viral with their business on popular social platforms like facebook, twitter, etc. I agree that a great landing page is also a factor to achieve conversion and engage your readers.

  3. Nitin mohan

    Hi Harsh, It’s true that the social media can greatly impact any type of business whether it is small or large. Now days, I have seen many popular social media sites are coming on the web like tsu etc which are admiting that they will pay us money when we share our post on there site

  4. Aashray Anand

    A very detailed article i must say @Harsh. Using Social Media for business requires more brain than efforts and this guide really do tell how to take that out. Well written steps and words. Looking forward to make an infography on the same with your idea. Cheers keep inspiring 🙂

  5. Abuzar

    Hi harsh!

    Thank you so much for sharing this great tips…. Social media is not only good for marketing business but people can use it for blog marketing

    TQ!

  6. Nilantha Jayawardhana

    Good Post. Thanks for the post.

    Definitely, social media is a good way to promote a online businesses and blogs. I think expecting a huge traffic from search engines is a stupidity. The most of my blog’s traffic from social media and referrals.

    There are many advantages using social media; but, we should use some tips and tricks to get these advantages.

    In this post, Mr. Harsh explain it very well.

    In this blog “Shoutmeloud”, there are many posts under this topic.

  7. Aakash Salunke

    Great post bro. I use social media for my site. I use Facebook, Twitter and Google +. I don’t know how to use pinterest and tumblr. Can you please write a post on how to use it?

  8. Vikas Yadav

    Hello Harsh, It is true that social media can greatly impact any type of business whether it is small or large. Now days, I have seen many popular social media sites are coming on the web like Harnu, tumblr, pinterest etc. But, it is not possible for a blogger to spend huge amount of time on all these social media sites. So, I want to ask you how to find which social media sites is suitable for a specific niche blog.

  9. DHost

    Hello Harsh

    Helpful post for me, taking a next step for promoting our brand in social media. I look forward for a tool that is helpful in managing all social website, as you discussed/recommended Dlvr.it and bufferapp these are best to manage social presence for Facebook, Twitter, etc. few ones, can you recommend that supports multiple social platforms.

    Even referring you blog post about tools for social media monitoring https://www.shoutmeloud.com/6-useful-social-media-monitoring-tools-2.html all are specific to twitter, facebook, linkedin etc hopefully i want tool which support maximum numbers of social media websites.

    Thanks in Advance!

  10. veganolo

    Social media for Business is GREAT for now and forever!

    I’ve used pinterest to optimize my site and the result was amazing my site was jumped from #234 to #9 in few weeks time.

    The trick is we must got our website pinned and repinned by many people this is the hardest part. Most of pinterest users won’t doing repin when they aren’t like what we pinned.

    I do simple thing to outsource it on fiverr and got my site pinned by more than 70 people, I don’t know how can he did it just search by typing pinterest on fiverr and you will find it.

    As I know currently pinterest is best for SEO for these reason:
    1. Once our website pinned it has 3 backlinks counts
    2. Google interest in social media signal so it will not tagged as links farm
    3. Currently pinterest links are dofollow even the image
    4. Even not support anchor text (except the url link), it’s still perfect for placing our keywords in description. Google will READ it!!
    5. Obama The President and Mark Zuckerberg now pinning on Pinterest lol.

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