Top 5 Benefits Explaining, Why Social Media Marketing?
Chelsea Elkus
Marketing Professional | Global Business Management | Creative Enthusiast
Who doesn’t like free marketing?
In this new age of social media it’s important to use these platforms to your companies benefit. There are so many reasons why companies should strengthen their social media marketing strategies; and I am going to share my top 5 reasons with you.
As you have probably figured out by now social media is where creativity comes alive, but you need to be sure to follow a content strategy in order to publish posts that align with your company’s mission and vision. If you want to learn more about building a social media marketing strategy click for 8 easy steps to follow.
Contents strategies add value, but why is social media marketing important? 50% of small businesses are not aware of the benefits of social media marketing! This was news to me; I thought everyone knew about social media marketing, but it turns out that too many do not. This is why I needed to share this revelation with you.
Let's start by going over the major platforms that can be used to connect to your target audience:
- Instagram (my favorite)
- Youtube
- Snapchat
There are a lot of platforms to manage all at one time. Use tools such as, Hootsuite, Buffer, and Google Analytics to manage them all on one platform.
Alright, let's get to the important stuff; my top 5 benefits of social media marketing.
- Creating Brand Recognition
If this isn’t already one of your goals, add it because this is one of the most important marketing goals to have. This is because consumers want to know the brand before they buy from them. Opportunely, this is easy to do with social media, as these platforms let you reach your audience much quicker than traditional marketing methods.
*A Tip: Make sure your logo is in your profile picture and that your cover photo isn’t overwhelming. Take a look at Nike’s Twitter for a better sense of how to look clean and look professional, while generating recognition.
2. Promote Conversions Around Your Brand
Like talked about earlier, a strong social media content strategy will add value to your brand by generating conversions about your brand, products, services, and partners. There are so many ways to engage with your audience, use your creativity or use these 7 ways as a guide. This is important because this is where you are provided with real feedback from your audience about your brand's product or service and this is where you get people talking about your brand with genuine conversations on social media. There are natural ways of generating conversions, focus on those and go from there:
- Give shout-outs to partners
- Seek feedback about your products
- Ask open ended questions - this gets your audience actively involved with your brand by answering the questions themselves.
*A Tip: Engage with your audience, don’t just let them talk about your brand. Like and comment on user generated posts. This generates trust and loyalty for your brand and put a person behind the brand.
3. Provide Outstanding Customer Service That Keeps Your Audience Satisfied and Happy
In this new age of instant gratification on social media, customers expect a quick response to all inquiries; which are, in turn, to be handled through those social media platforms. Many times inquiries come in the form of a comment on a post or a direct message.
Focusing on your social media customer service provides your audience with a meaningful connection to your brand, solidifying a relationship between your company and your customers. It’s extremely important when building your social media strategy that you add a customer service strategy to your plan.
Here’s an example of a timely response through Bootay Bags Instagram comments:
4. Direct Traffic To Your Website or Blog
Social media allows for more traffic that is diverse in nature; it is unlikely that all of your traffic will be from search engines.
When trying to direct traffic to your website or blog it’s important to optimize your posts. Keep in mind the time in which you post and how often. You don’t want to put your audience off by annoying them with too many posts. To do this properly make sure you look into your analytics to find the best times to post, for your audience, and how often.
*A Tip: Shorten all your links on your posts and profile for a cleaner, less overbearing page. You can use bit.ly to do this.
5. It’s (mostly) FREE
Doesn't FREE sound good?
Social media platforms, even for business accounts, do not require a subscription purchase. The use of these platforms are free. If you go the extra mile, promoting your posts to increase exposure, that's when you set a budget for each platform and you will need to spend some money. There are tools to help you promote on any budget, for example on Facebook and Twitter.
*A Tip: Don’t create organic posts that sound like an ad; it’ll look like spam to your audience. If you do add copy that is ad speak or if you add a call-to-action, you should promote it; in doing so you’ll increase your ROI
There are so many more benefits to social media marketing. With the way things are moving in terms of technology it will do your company well to hop on this bandwagon and create a social media content strategy, so that your brand can experience these benefits.