Social Media is the new word of mouth for businesses with worldwide users expected to grow to over 3 billion monthly users by 2021. Done right, social media can help your business to build awareness and drive sales, reach a broader audience, gain valuable customer insights and show the human side to your brand.
In this 3 part series, we’ll explore why your small business should be on social media, look at what the main platforms are, and how to get started on them.
Let’s start with the ‘why?’.
8 reasons why your small business should be on social media
- Build your brand identity by showing more of your personality.
- Interactivity – with social media you can build community in a way that TV, radio or newspapers can’t. Your readers can comment, share, react and start a conversation.
- Audience interaction – your audience can add reviews and provide feedback or talk to you in real-time.
- Reputation management – proactive engagement on social can enhance your business’s reputation for customer service.
- Potential for viral marketing exposure – the right message can spread very quickly.
- Improved search engine rankings – engaging posts can help drive more traffic to your website.
- Reduce overall marketing costs – social media channels can be a very cost effective way to get the word out.
- Targeted advertising through social media – target people based on location, demographics, interests and age and easily measure the performance of your campaign.
Social media can be an amazing mouthpiece for your brand and should now be an integral part of your marketing strategy.
In part 2 of this 3 part series, we’ll cover off the ‘where?’ – which social media channels you should consider for your business.