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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will know how much social media has grown in both usage and popularity in recent years. And you are unlikely to come across a marketing expert today who will not recommend this successful strategy as an essential part of your business’s marketing plan.

Social media networks are not only a great tool for attracting new users, but they can also help you successfully connect with your target audience, which in turn strengthens your brand and market presence, and ultimately helps the growth of your overall business.

If you are still sceptical about using social media as part of your marketing, consider these benefits when making your decision:

Brand strengthening

Social media is one of the best ways to help you build and strengthen your brand. This is because you can choose the way you want to present your company and what information you will provide to your audience. By consistently creating valuable content, you can gain a good reputation and potentially attract new users, as well as strengthening your relationship with existing ones.

Brand loyalty

Brands that use social media channels effectively, are the ones that have loyal followers. Social media helps users get closer to a brand. With constant communication available and access to the content you publish, they consider themselves closer to that brand, are loyal to it and ultimately will promote that brand to their friends, acquaintances and others on various social media networks.

Using social media helps you make that human contact and connection with your audience, which is more important than imposing a strict, business name on a company.

Community building

Social media networks are ideal for creating communities, and once your users become part of your community, you have access to them at all times. This means you can find out their opinion about your brand, what they like and what they don’t, and you can take those tips into account when devising your future marketing plans.

A social community provides you with online dialogue, which is ultimately more useful than any paid marketing analysis.

Frequent exposure to customers

In the world of marketing, it can take six to eight exposures to a product or service before a customer decides to buy.

The advantage of social media is that you can frequently expose your business and what you offer to a large network of potential customers, thus shortening the usual time required for them to filter through your marketing funnel from cold prospect to sale.

Establish authority

Social media networks are a useful channel for you to establish authority in your field of activity, making you the first choice of your target audience when they need help or advice.

By creating and publishing great content and responding to customer enquiries, you are adding value to your followers and strengthening your authority. This, in turn, will increase your influence among other owners of similar businesses, possibly leading to new jobs and partnerships.

Stay one step ahead of the competition

Believe it or not, your potential customers will follow your activity on social media.

So imagine their disappointment if they search for you and you are not there, or worse, your profile exists but is out of date and inactive.

An inactive social media page speaks volumes to your potential customers about your interest in them. The fact is that many of your competitors use social media, and by ignoring this platform, you leave them free access to your audience.

There are no limits

Social media is global. It has no boundaries. Which means, by using it, your business is not restricted by your location, and has the potential to reach new users everywhere.

Social media also allows you to promote your business in your city, region, country, continent, and is therefore very useful as a means to increase your reach. The sky is literally the limit.

Reduced marketing and analysis costs

Compared to other marketing strategies, social media requires a much smaller budget and less time.

Allocating 6 hours a week for marketing through social media can increase traffic, and your return on investment (ROI), has the potential to be much higher.

Google Analytics helps you track the activity on your social media networks, and assess their impact on your website traffic and product purchases. From this analysis, you can then decide on what further action, or course, you can take on your marketing campaign, by eliminating those activities that do not bring benefits, and focusing on those that have shown better results.

More traffic to your website

Social media can be the leading source of traffic to your business website.

When you share posts from your blog, videos, or other content from your website, you are giving your audience a reason to click on the content posted, and visit your page.

Once you attract users to your site, you can invite them to take action: by subscribing to your newsletter, purchasing your product, or offering a free consultation.

Better positioning on web search engines

More active social media profiles of your business can lead to a better position on search engines, and increase your visibility, maybe even earnings.

Google and other web search engines consider a strong presence on social media to be a significant factor because strong brands always use these platforms. By constantly being active on social media, you are sending a signal to web search engines about the legitimacy, credibility and reliability of your business.

These days, social media has to be considered an essential part of your marketing toolkit.

However, the biggest mistake most small businesses make is thinking they have to be on every single platform. And this is what leads to inactive social profiles and inconsistent content posting.

News flash, you don’t need to be on every platform.

A quick Google search will help you discover where your target demographic ‘hangs out’ on social media. And if you’re still unsure, just pick the one you prefer and believe is best for your business.

Do you think social media is good for business? Which is your preferred platform?

Let me know in the comments.