Marcus RichardsUnless you’ve been living under a rock, it’s hard to ignore the influence of social media on almost all aspects of our lives. For business in particular, it’s essential to invest in growing your social media presence and formulate a strong social media marketing strategy to help reach new customers, generate sales, and grow your brand.
You can learn more about the importance of social media in business by completing a business degree with a tertiary education provider such as MBS Online. Alternatively, stay with us as we outline the reasons why you should invest in social media as a business person.
Social Media Marketing: Why It’s Important for Business
Having an active and strategically curated social media presence can assist with the following:
Enhancing Potential New Customers’ Awareness of Your Brand
It’s a no-brainer – developing your social media strategy builds brand awareness. It does this in several ways in addition to getting your brand name out there! If customers haven’t heard of your brand, they’re unlikely to shop from you. Use social media to get people talking about your business, and ensure that your products and services are front of mind when your customers are ready to buy.
In addition to this, building a social media presence also creates trust. The more information there is about your business online, the more reputable it will appear. This is especially true, of course, if you are the one who is curating this information. By actively creating and honing the image of your business that you want to portray online, you can control how your customers perceive your brand.
Maximising Your Business’s Audience Reach
Along with getting your name out there, targeted social media marketing (SMM) can also increase your audience reach. SMM can be used in conjunction with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), which works to actively drive online traffic to your business’s website and other digital channels.
When reaching out to online audiences, it is important to keep your brand image consistent across all of your social media profiles. To do this, you need to actively curate your brand identity. Part of this is establishing what your brand voice will sound like. Is it cheeky and playful, perhaps appealing to younger audiences? Or maybe it is more mature, reserved, or authoritative – establishing your brand as a reputable or credible voice that can be trusted. Depending on which brand voice you choose to adopt, ensure you maintain this tone throughout your social media marketing. That way, when online audiences do land on your social media pages, they will be able to understand exactly what your brand is about.
Promoting Your Products and Services To Online Customers
Social media marketing can also be utilised to promote your products and services online.
Try creating ads on Instagram and Facebook to attract new customers to your brand. You can even target your ads to certain segments of the market. For example, if your business is based on selling makeup and skincare to young girls, the backend of Meta for Business can allow you to only show your ads to online users from that demographic.
Previously known as Facebook for Business, the Meta for Business program is an essential tool for creating social media advertisements. The program can even enable you to specifically target consumers who have previously engaged with your brand, as well as help you reach fresh new leads. Targeted customer audiences can also be segmented based on their interests, as well as other social media profiles they interact with frequently.
Connecting and Interacting Directly with Your Customer
Another great thing about social media for business is that you can interact directly with your customers through your online profiles. When customers comment on or reply to your social media posts, this opens up the conversation for direct interaction.
This also enables you to collect real, authentic feedback from your customers via online word of mouth. Word of mouth is a powerful advertising tool, as customers will almost always trust the reviews of other users. Harness this by using your social media posts to encourage customers to post their feedback online. You can even use your social media to direct customers to complete online surveys about your products.
