If you think you should be getting on the social media wagon because everyone else is you’re wrong. The reason why you should be getting savvy with social media is because using social media effectively can really help you to achieve your business goals. What sorts of things can social media help you to achieve? Everything from better customer service to that all-important search engine optimisation.
Benefits of social media
The five big benefits of social media for businesses:
Social media as a customer service tool
A social media account can act as a place for customers to interact with you, and allow you to develop that after-sales relationship which is ever so important for businesses which are selling their services. Reply to queries, questions and complaints with speed and grace and you’ll get in all of your customers’ good books.
Social media as a community building tool – increase customer loyalty
The average person spends 95% of their time on the internet on social media sites. Chances are that they’ll visit your website and leave after a browse most of the time, but if you get them to like your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter you’re in a position to start really building a relationship with them overtime.
Social media as a traffic driving tool
If you create engaging content people will want to see more. The viral reach of content posted on social media can be huge, and what’s more – people are also using social media as a kind of search engine for questions and recommendations. If you utilise this effectively you can really bump up the traffic to your website.
Social media as a marketing campaign tool
Do you have deals you want to shout about? Social media marketing campaigns can be very cost effective. When people see a great deal or opportunity they tend to share it (sharing is the whole point of social media for your average user). A successful campaign can increase the names in your database, increase sales, and increase brand awareness among other things.
Social media as an SEO tool
Google and SEO are like two peas in a very happy internet pod.
A search engine’s job is to help us find what we’re looking for (i.e. what’s relevant) and social media recommendations now play a large role in helping Google to determine relevancy. If you think about it, it makes sense. Recommendations say that the people who have found your content also found it useful, so there really is no surprise that Google pays very close attention to what goes on in social media.
(If you want to know more about ways to improve your SEO, why don’t you take a look at our beginner’s guide to SEO?)
Google + (or that time when Google married social media for good)
Google’s social media platform is all about creating more data to get relevant results. The +1 is arguably the most innovative and effective part of Google+ because not only does it act as a public recommendation, it also helps Google to see what content you find useful and relevant (making it easier for it to pull up the most relevant searches in the future from this data).
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Google might be a bit biased towards its own social platforms, and that is one of the reasons why it is a really smart idea to make sure your business has a Google account and makes full use of Google+ local for business.
Next Steps
If you’re interested in tapping into the power of social media you should consider getting:
- A blog on your website
- Share and follow buttons on your website and blog
- Professional profiles for your social media accounts
The first step of growing in social media is to begin sharing, and to make it as easy as possible to share. Having a blog gives you a platform which you control to host all of your content from which to share from, and a professional profile gives you far more credibility.
Get in touch with us if you’re interested in adding a blog or additional buttons to your website, or in getting your profiles a professional makeover.
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