5 Reasons to use Social Media Marketing

Social media is a wonderful for thing both for individuals and businesses; it has allowed us to easily connect to people and interests on a global scale. For small and mid-sized businesses, those not blessed with a large marketing budget, social media can do more than just connect, offering a wonderful opportunity for exposure and increased conversions. If you aren’t yet aware of the multitude of benefits these platforms provide, let’s review our 5 reasons to use social media marketing to help convince of the advantage they provide.

5 Reasons to use Social Media Marketing

While there are a lot of good reasons to use social media marketing, these are our top 5 the any company can benefit from:

1. More Traffic – Who doesn’t want traffic to their website? Even better is when it is inbound traffic, which when it comes from social media can eschew the use of general keyword searches. Having multiple social media profiles, one each on the platforms that are popular with you target customer base, allows more roads to you. By using multiple platforms and providing varying forms of content on these platforms you will naturally open your business up to a wider audience which will include people in your primary demographic as well as other consumers all over the world.
2. Increased Brand Power – Social media is also a tremendous way to increase the power of your brand, both in awareness and authority. Being highly visible is the first step of awareness and is there a better, cheaper way to get your name and logo out there than social media? You already have existing people to help promote your business with employees, friends and family promoting, liking, and sharing your pages and content. On top of that, social media is a fantastic place to foster brand loyalty by communicating directly with your customers in a positive and helpful manner. Last but not least is the ability to positively influence your brand’s authority which is done by not only increasing loyalty, but by being responsive and posting authorative, useful content.
3. Improved SEO – It is hard to pinpoint the exact way in which social media marketing increases your search engine rankings, however studies have shown that businesses that actively engage in SMM have then seen an improvement in rankings; there is definitely a correlation. Of course much about SEO is in the same boat where certain actions over time have shown their value to increase rankings which is why we do them, even when Google doesn’t confirm the specific logistics behind it. High quality content with good keyword usage is always going to benefit your business and using social media as the chosen platform does offer the opportunity for massive exposure which includes existing and new customers.
4. More Conversions – It is simple math; the more people that are exposed to your brand and business equal more opportunity for conversions. On top of that, Generation Y has proved that they are a group of consumers that prefer to make purchases based on recommendations of people they know rather than shopping on their own or trusting random reviews. As they are now the largest consumer demographic, it makes sense to spread your name as positively as possible to social media, a place where Generation Y lives.
5. Customer Service Opportunity – Smart companies have turned social media platforms into secondary or even primary outlets for customer service. Rather than create your own app or website interface, you can easily piggyback on existing platform structure to offer a direct connection from consumers to your business as a way to not only solve problems and offer support, but humanize your business. Direct responses to posts, sharing of real stories and re-posting helpful information from or for others are all great ways to connect, interact and help customers; plus that type of interaction increases brand loyalty which is always a hot commodity.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that social media is an inexpensive way to help pad your businesses bottom line. Getting started is fairly easy and there are a lot of great platforms to use that your customers are already on. So take advantage of these 5 reasons to use social media marketing to make your brand stronger and help your business grow!