I know. You hear this all the time. But the thought of adding one more thing to your plate is overwhelming, so you put it off.
I’ve talked to countless business owners who are in the same boat. But all of them agree that adding or improving their social media marketing boosted their business’s digital footprint and produced a higher ROI than they ever expected.
Let’s talk about it.
Why Use Social Media For Business?
There’s no denying social media has changed the world. It changed the way we communicate, connect with people, and how to market ourselves and our business.
There’s also no denying that, in this digital age, social media and business go hand in hand. There’s no better way to reach new audiences, share your products and services, and connect with other business owners than social media.
Building up your platforms and staying engaged can be time-consuming, but it’s so worth it. Here are some of the top reasons your business needs social media marketing:
- Tell your story in your own words
- Stay in the front of your audience’s minds
- Learn more about your competitors and what they do that works
- Create a brand identity
- Increase brand awareness
- Build relationships and connections with your preferred audience
- Understand the patterns of your audience
- Build your authority
- Boost your SEO
Let’s get into detail about some of these benefits and how you can use them for your business.
9 Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Your Business
The benefits of social media marketing for your business are numerous. They include:
1. Craft Your Own Brand Story
When you curate your social media presence, you get to tell the world about your products, services, and business mission yourself. You aren’t relying on word of mouth and other people’s opinions.
Social media allows you to portray the exact image of your brand that you believe in.
2. Stay Visible to Your Audience
Staying visible to your audience is one of the biggest benefits of social media for business. When you post consistent content on your social media platforms, your audience gets used to seeing your name, logo, and products regularly.
This helps to convince them they need your product and compels them to buy more often. Even if they don’t buy immediately, your business will be the first that comes to mind when they have a need that your product can solve.
3. Keep An Eye On Your Competitors
While the key to building a sustainable and successful business is focusing on your own brand and products, you need to have a pulse on what your competitors are doing.
Social media makes that easy. By following your competitors’ social media posts and keeping up with what their audience is resonating with, you can boost your creativity and find new ideas that will work for your business, too.
4. Create Your Brand Identity
People want to buy products from reputable brands. Social media is the quickest way to create a brand identity that really represents your business. This is one of the biggest reasons brands use social media for business.
Through consistent posting, you can craft messaging that will represent your brand. Your audience will associate certain values and aspects with your brand. This builds your authority within your industry and helps you become more trustworthy.
5. Increase Brand Awareness
Once you’ve established your brand identity, you need to keep it at the forefront of people’s minds. Social media is a strong tool when it comes to brand awareness.
Hearing consistent messaging from one brand helps to cement you into the minds of your audience. They become more aware of your product simply by hearing about it. Increasing your brand awareness will be a big benefit of social media for business.
6. Build Connections and Relationships With Your Audience
Once you’ve established brand identity and awareness, it’s time to take it to the next level.
Start building connections and relationships with your audience. People want to buy from people. When you share your brand’s values and missions, your audience will start to feel more connected and loyal to your brand. This loyalty is a huge key to success in both social media and business.
7. Understand Your Audience’s Patterns
Stronger relationships are key to understanding your audience’s buying patterns. And if you want to increase your bottom line, you need to understand what will make your audience buy your product.
Keeping up with their social media activity is a great clue to their patterns. What are they resonating with? How long do they typically spend interacting with a brand before buying a product? How often do they come back to purchase more?
The answers to all of those questions can be found by analyzing their behavior patterns and audience insights on social media.
Example of Audience Insights on Social Media
8. Build Your Authority As A Trustworthy Brand
Again, people want to buy from people. But more importantly, they want to buy from people who know what they’re talking about.
Social media marketing is a great way to build your brand’s authority and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
9. Boost Your SEO and SERP Rankings
While social media might not directly impact your SERP ranking, it definitely influences it.
When you take the time to create your brand identity, increase brand awareness, and build yourself as an authority in your industry, you will earn organic backlinks. Other people will start to share your content.
The more shares and backlinks the better, both for your human audience and the Google SEO robots.
How to Get Started with Social Media and Business
Now that you understand why to use social media for business, let’s talk about how to do it.
Create a Social Media Strategy
First, determine what you want to get out of marrying social media and business. Write down your goals by answering these questions:
- Do you want to create a brand identity?
- Do you want to drive engagement?
- Is there a certain ROI you want to aim for?
- What channels do you want to prioritize?
- How often do you want to post?
To determine where to put your focus, you need to do some market research to find out where your audience is hanging out. The audience you’ll reach on Instagram is not the same audience you’ll reach on Twitter. Don’t get overwhelmed by trying to post on every single platform. Find where your audience is and go from there.
Establish Your Social Media Team
Social media management can quickly become a full-time job if you aren’t careful.
To avoid this problem, decide who will be in charge of your social media. What members do you need for your social media and SEO team?
Will you be keeping the content creation and platform management in-house, or will you be outsourcing? If you want to outsource, weigh the pros and cons of hiring an agency or hiring a freelancer.
Don’t worry if you aren’t a social media pro yet. There are tons of courses and tools out there to teach you how to become a social media star. With a little work, you’ll be seeing the benefits of social media for your business in no time!
Decide On a Social Media Management Tool
The best part about social media is that it can be automated! There is no longer a need to post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn in real-time.
There are a ton of social media management tools to choose from. Take a look at the options and capabilities each one offers to decide which one will work best for you.
Most management tools have a free option and a paid membership option. Take this into account when deciding which one to use as well.
Develop an Influencer Strategy
A lot of businesses work with influencers as a way to promote their brands. This isn’t necessary for everyone and it depends entirely on your brand.
If you do decide to go down the influencer route, you’ll need to establish who will be working with them, how, and how often.
Establish a Content Calendar
The best content is planned content. If you think you can just wing your social media posts, you’re very mistaken.
Most brands build out social media content calendars months in advance. This gives the graphic designers time to create graphics and the copywriting team time to write the captions. It is also necessary for the project manager or social media manager to oversee, edit, and approve all posts.
The key to social media and business is to create quality content that is posted in a consistent manner. You want your brand voice and messaging to be the same across all of your social media platforms, as well as your website and any other marketing materials.
Wrapping It Up with Social Media and Business
There are so many benefits of social media for businesses. Now that you know the major ones, you’re ready to get started on creating a social media marketing strategy that will grow your business without growing your stress levels.
Keep your social media work fun, engaging, and positive. You’ll quickly see how strong a social media community will support and uplift your business!
