Social media has silently made its way into people’s routine. Some people immediately reach for their smartphone the moment they open their eyes, some people eat their breakfast while scrolling their Instagram feed, while some update their status while taking a dump – I’m serious.
If you are a business owner, social media provides ample opportunity to introduce your business to future customers, in cost-effective way. Even big companies recognize how social network marketing can improve their business and reach out to many different platforms, from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, to Instagram.
Some business owners maybe are still not convinced with the advantage of social network marketing. It seems ineffective, not to mention hard to maintain. If you’re one of them, you may change your mind after you read this.
- It provides frequent exposure
With social media, you can deliver content as often as you want to your customers for free. You can update content daily or even twice a day. Some business owners even update their content more than five times a day. Of course, you should tailor this advantage to your customer’s need, since too many update can be annoying.
The content you made immediately appear in your customer’s feed, exposing them to the products or services you offer, keeping your brand in the top of their minds. The more often you update, the more likely they’ll remember your brand, creating brand awareness to your customers. - It helps you gain referrals
The nature of social media is to share. Users want to share photos, experiences, and opinion to your followers. One customer who shares his or her pleasant experience with you will expose your business to his or her follower, creating word-of-mouth marketing that may leads to new customers.
Many influencers use social media nowadays, and just like their name imply, their followers look up to them for inspiration. These influencers may easily have thousands to millions followers. Their followers pay attention to what products they wear and what service they use. You can get help from these influencers with endorsement – cheaper than paid advertisement, but can be just as effective. - It makes you easier to reach
Sometimes people decide not to buy your products because they can’t get sufficient information about it, such as price, raw materials, maintenance, and so on. Social media, with its comment or message feature, help them to reach you, just in case they think calling or sending email is too troublesome.
Sometimes customers need after sales service and social media can serve this function well. Customers can leave review and feedback as well as leave complaints easily. Any of their comment and inquiry can be replied quickly, improving your service quality. - It leads to traffic to your website or blog
In fact, it’s rare for people to visit your website or blog by directly typing the address at their browser. Usually, they come via link from other place – such as search engine result, online advertisement, or social media.
Social media is an equivalent of gathering crowd in online form. A content posted in social media, provided it is interesting enough for your target market, will be seen by millions user. Even a small percentage of them will increase the traffic of your website or blog pretty nicely. If your website or blog have been previously set up well, it’s not impossible for these traffics to be converted into leads or even sales. - Gain customers’ insight
Social media these days have many features to help you create content you want. In Twitter, for example, you can create mini poll for your followers. You can also host mini quiz in Facebook and Instagram. Design the poll and quiz so your customers can have fun with it while at the same time you can gain valuable information from them, such as their product preference, favorite promotion, and so on.
Another plus point from Social Network Marketing is that their data and metric are easily accessible. Google Analytics provided simple statistics such as the average time your visitors stay at your website, the bounce rate from the visitors, even ROI (Return on Investment), enough to review whether your marketing strategy works or not. Even better, if you’re just starting your social network marketing business, it’s free version is more than enough to do your analysis. Later, if you need more services, you can consider its premium version. - It’s cost-effective
Most of social media are free, and if you provide the content by yourself, then yes, the cost is virtually zero. A better, albeit slightly costlier option, is to get paid-advertisement. Your advertisement will be delivered to the demographic that is most likely to like and need your products.
Even paid advertisement is not expensive, if you consider their value. Most of online-advertisement. - Building positive brand association
Reputation affects brand in two ways, positively or negatively. Customers nowadays are smarter and more idealist, they’d less likely to use your brand if you’re involved in unsavory issues like animal cruelty and environmental damage.
With social media, you can push forward your brand’s positive image by running a campaign for the issue your business is concerned with or creating content that pushes your brand’s positive image.
If you have a business but not yet engaged in social network marketing business, get engaged now. There are plenty of social media platforms you can choose from, depending on your need. If you’re a B2C business in lifestyle industry, Instagram’s highly visual concept may be what you are looking for. If you’re in a more rigid and professional industry – LinkedIn may be better suited for you, but the point is, social network marketing caters to various industry. There’s a place for everyone, and it’s free.
To thrive, a business has to connect with its various stakeholders, particularly customers. These days, what connect people – across the globe, from all ages and interests and needs – are social media. So, how could you hope to reach them, if you don’t take advantages of social media?