Benefits of Social Media for Business in 2024

What are the benefits of social media for business in 2020?

As we all know Man is a social being and cannot live in a solitary environment. In good olden days, people used to socialize and meet by holding public functions.  Today, the medium of socializing has changed a lot. Social media has become the most popular way of communicating with people and establishing contacts by maintaining a good relationship with them. It is a modern way tool for mass communication, personal communication and business communication. The most striking feature of social media is that it is instant, paperless, cost-effective and worldwide.  Social media has a very important role to play in everyone life as social media has no boundaries and one can connect to each other in a very pleasant and appropriate manner. Social media binds people together irrespective of religion, race and creed and allows us to express ourselves and share our stories.

Social networking is used to connect to family,friend, colleagues, customers, or clients with the help of Internet-based social media sites.

What are the 6 types of social media?

The Different Types Of Social Media Platforms To Serve Ads:

Social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+).

Microblogging (Twitter, Tumblr).

Photo sharing (Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest).

Video sharing (YouTube, Facebook Live, Periscope, Vimeo).

The benefits of  social media is immense from the business point of view.  The following are the benefits of social media that serves as an important medium for the growth of any business.

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Increase  brand awareness

Social media is platform which helps the business to increase the awareness of the brand . This is because half of the world’s population are using social media  for business or social purpose everyday.  It thus increases the brand awareness without much spending on other  forms of advertisement like television, hoardings  and bill boards.

Humanize brand awareness

A study from a UK based researcher has found that half of the adult population do not trust a brand without a proof  that it keep its promises that it claims. Thus it is necessary to connect with customer and potential customer to showcase your human side of your brand. This means that what does the company have as its brand values, how does it look after the interests of the customers and employees without making bogus claims and does the product really work. To humanize brand awareness, it  is necessary to introduce your followers to those people who are already using the product and are benefiting from your products

Establishing your brand as a thought leader

Thought leadership is a great way to build consumer trust in whichever industry your business is in.

According to linked in research with Edelman , the research shows that majority of the buyers believe that thought leadership build trust and belief as they are considered to be technical experts . Linked in is great platform to establish yourself as a though leader.

Stay top of the mind

Most of  social media users log into their social media account at least twice a day according to Pew Research Center.  Thus social media help to stay connected with your followers at the time. As such,  entertaining and informative  Social media posts will make your followers come back again and stay on the top of their mind whenever they want to make a purchase.

Benefits of social media for growth

Increase website traffic

Social media posts and ads contribute effectively to drive traffic to your website. Hence sharing new post from your blog or website into the social media channels  helps your readers to access your content instantly. Participating in social chats like the weekly #Hootchat on twitter  aids to increase visibility , get new people to showcase your expertise  and thus drive traffic to your website.  It is also important to offer great value and not just being too promotional  and also to add your website in all your social media profiles so that people can  know your business more and get familiar.

Generate leads

Social media platform like Facebook offers a convenient and low commitment  way to generate leads for your business. Social media platform offers a business page and various advertising format  to the target right audience  and grow thebusiness. Hence lead generation is an important benefit of social media business  platform to allow people to know about your product and make an purchase if it is beneficial for them.

Boost sales

Social media platforms are a magical tool for sales professional to sell their product online without the hassle of manually travelling and marketing their products.  It is necessary to have your social media account linked to your sales funnel. Sales funnel is the simple and small form which collects the email addresses of the interested customers and thus helps the sales professionals to keep good relation with the list by sending valuable information and talking to them through email to buy the product eventually.

Partner with influencers

When people talk about your product in social media it creates a brand awareness , trust and credibility. This is called Word of mouth which drives 50 percent of purchasing decisions.  By partnering with the influencers in social media with large number of followers helps to make the task easier  and gives your brand four times lift than partnering with celebrity who charge exorbitant amount to endorse your product.

Benefits of social media for content creation and distribution

Promote content

As we all know , content is the king in world of internet. So promoting your  well researched and informative content in front of new people helps your business to grow  and reach the audience base  . For example , Adobe used Linkedin sponsored content  to reach their audience by using infographics and videos to showcase their research.  Hence to reap the benefits of social media it is necessary to have a content marketing plan in your agenda.

Go viral

Going viral in the world of the internet is like wildfire in the forest. By effectively sharing your content online leads people to start liking your posts, then commenting on it and sharing your social post to their friends and followers. This has a multiplier effect on your content published online by getting thousands of shares and reach your audience in a passive way and connect with them.   However, this would not have been possible without social media sites.

Source content

To create good and useful content on social media. It is necessary to ask your followers what they want or engages in social listening to come up with ideas for content creation and give people what they want. This is a sure way to make people read and share your content.  Another way is to create a contest or use a hashtag to source user-generated content and getting your followers involved in it, that can build excitement about your brand and library of the social post to share over time.

Benefits of social media for communication

Reputation management

If your business is already a topic of talk on social media, it may happen that it can create positive and negative feedback about your brand. Social media platform helps the business to protect its reputation if there is a negative remark on the media. The social media team can share its side of the story in a polite and professional way if it’s not true and at the same time if there is a positive remark , then the team can shower plenty of thanks and draw attention to their kind words.

Crisis communication

Social media helps the business to manage crisis situation efficiently  in case of threat to it business . This can be saved by communicating to the masses  by highlighting the  facts and figures and gaining confidence from the masses at large.   It can be false propaganda, racial discrimination or bad  quality product . It is necessary to have a plan in place to deal with such type of situation effectively.  For example:  Nestle Maggi noodles crisis and Philadelphia starbucks store crisis.

Customer and audience engagement

Social networks give businessmen to interact directly with the customers and fans and vice versa. It is two-way communication, unlike traditional media which offers only one-way communication. It is important to engage your customers and followers to expand your business. Stay active and respond to comments and queries on your own social media post in a way that’s appropriate to your brand.

Customer service and customer support

Customers do need  customer service for their products purchased and often customers reach out to social media   for resolving their issues. For example if a customer receives a quick response to their tweet on twitter  will be willing purchase more products of that brand in future.

Benefits of social media for gaining insights.

Monitor conversations that are relevant  to your brand

Monitoring conversation in the social media in important element of audience engagement . It becomes a source of intelligence about your brand , your competitors and your niche.

Learn  more about your customers

Social media helps us to understand  the customer behavior, psychology , their needs and wants  and purchasing pattern. Thus social media generates huge amount of data that the businesses can make use of to make smarter business decisions.

Gauge sentiment around your brand

Social media helps the businesses to gauge public sentiment around  the brand. If everythings is going fine then it is a positive signal for the business. Unfortunatley,  if  sentiment is  negatively expressed then the quick response team have to figure out the root cause and address the problem at the earliest  to protect the image and reputation of the business.

Keep an eye on the competition

Social media also helps to know about the performance of the competitors. If there is any negative point about your competitor then that can be addressed and thus winning new customers for your business.  For example, A cold drinks company launched a  promotion to deliver free cold drinks and it failed to deliver on the promise and people took this matter to social media and thus allowing the competitor company to grab the opportunity and promote its products. This resulted in the followers of that brand to become the brand loyalists for the competitor company.

Stay on top of industry news

In the online world, things change and move fast. Hence it is necessary to keep a virtual ear in the social media that helps you to know about the upcoming changes in your industry that could have an impact on your current business.

Benefits of social media for advertising

Targeted advertising

Social ads are an inexpensive way to promote your business  online than other forms of advertising  like newspapers, television and hoardings. Social media offer powerful targeting options to reach the right audience and make most of your budget. It also has options to target to customer on basis of demographic information, geography, language  and online behaviors. You can craft messages based on these factors to attract the right audience and  only pay for the exact viewers you want to reach.

Retargeting

It is reported that 60 per cent of online shopping carts are abandoned.  The people who have abandoned products in a shopping cart are potential customers for the businesses. The reason being these people have already found your website, browsed the products and made a decision about what their wants and interests.  People abandon shopping carts for many reasons. However, anyone who has expressed interest in your company products should not be ignored and the sales professional must take note of this and with the help of tracking tools like the Facebook Pixel,  retarget these customers by showing social media ads for the exact products they have browsed.

Benefits of social media for proving ROI

Reporting and analytics

Social media  helps the businesses to track its social media activities. With the help of tools like Google Analytics ,  the advertiser can track the website traffic generated from social media , conversions, email sign-ups, and ROI on organic and paid social media campaigns.

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Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs)

3.How can I improve my social media presence?

4.How can I increase my social media presence?

Facebook

Make Your Presence Known.

Stay Active.

Piggyback on What’s Trending.

Don’t Be Afraid to Pay.

Use Tools to Monitor Your Activity.

Create Content People Actually Want to See.

5.Who are the users of social media?

Global social media overview says that more than half of all the people worldwide  now use social media. Our latest data show that  5 billion people across the planet are using social media in October 2020, equating to 53 percent of the total global population.