How Businesses Can Benefit From Using Social Media

Unless you’ve been living out of internet range for the past few years, you would have noticed the mark social media has made on modern life.

Social Media for Businesses

In their Worldwide Social Network Users: 2013 Forecast and Comparative Estimates report, emarketer suggests one in four people will be using social media in 2013, predicted to hit over 2 billion users by 2015.

With a smart marketing plan, businesses have a lot to gain from engaging with an online global audience.

Here are the most popular benefits for activating social media marketing for your business.

Brand Exposure and Awareness

Brand development is the most important reason for engaging with an audience on social media.  Sharing your story and building a relationship with potential customers will reward you in the long-term.  You know the  ‘ word of mouth ’  rule in referral marketing Right? Well, get your unique story in front of your online target market, build trust through your story and start growing your own fan base.

A raving loyal fan is worth his weight in gold, because a loyal fan will share your content therefore exposing  your brand to their personal networks. Businesses leverage Social proof  on social media for promoting and growing their brand reputation.

Lead Generation

The next phase of the social media sales funnel, is turning loyal fans into interested customers.  How you pique the interest of your fans could be as easy as setting up a promotion or competition, and the name of the game here, is high engagement.  Capturing your fans’ attention and driving them over to your website where you can ‘wow’ them with your awesomeness, and continue to build on that relationship of trust and familiarity in your brand.

Leadership and Market Intelligence

You may not realize it, but you also have an opportunity to become an influencer of your niche market.  Getting down at grass-roots level in your community and talking the issues, what’s ‘hot’ and what’s ‘not’ in your industry, positions your brand as a leader in your niche.  The benefit of communicating at this level with your fans, and not just at the support desk of your website,  is to develop your market intelligence, which then goes on to inform your business planning and future vision development.

Remember the passion you started your business with , who was it that you set out to help?
Respond and listen to feedback.  Watch statistics and trends on the social media platforms you use to gauge how to best position your marketing efforts.  Customers and Fans love to be heard!

Repeat Customers – loyal fans

Work on keeping your loyal fans and customers happy.  These are the people who will provide the social proof or testimonials for your business.  Remember, make your website easy to share to the main social media platforms.  Not only will you gain more exposure as mentioned above, but google will reward your website with higher page rankings for your keyword search terms.

We are yet to see the full scope of how social media can benefit businesses.  However if you use social media analytics and listen to your fans,  your business will benefit from using social media  and over time, be using marketing operations at the forefront of the social media movement.

Sources:
http://socialmediatoday.com/docmarkting/1818611/five-surprising-social-media-statistics-2013
http://www.spiral16.com/blog/2013/08/top-5-social-media-benefits-for-marketers/
http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/marketing/2013/07/five-reasons-your-company-can-benefit.html?page=all