5 Ways Your Business Can Benefit From Using Social Media

Communication in the modern world often takes place over social media. Of the 3.4 billion Internet users on the planet, 2.3 billion are active users of social media. As a business owner and entrepreneur, you can’t afford to ignore these numbers.

Doing so would mean you miss out on the many available opportunities to use social media for business advantage. Here are just some of the benefits you can expect to gain from being social.

Understand Your Customers Better

Social media usage has the potential to furnish you with valuable information about your customers. Using specialist social media management software such as Hootsuite, Buffer and Sprout Social can help you determine who your customers are, what they enjoy hearing about and how they feel about your brand. This allows you to better tailor your content and generate higher quality leads for your business.

Increase Awareness and Loyalty

Modern consumers expect to find a business on social media. Being able to connect with a business online adds an extra layer of convenience to their relationship with you. Numerous studies have shown that this online relationship results in greater degrees of brand awareness and loyalty, particularly when you commit to offering regular and relevant content across your chosen platforms.

Achieve Better Results from Advertising

Advertising costs can soon add up for any business. Running social ads can be fairly inexpensive in comparison to other mediums and can often yield better results. Facebook and LinkedIn both provide you with the opportunity to target your ads by segments such as location, age and connections. By doing so, you can ensure that your message is put in front of the right audience. Plus, you can track and tweak your ad in real time.

Increase Website Search Ranking and Traffic

Savvy entrepreneurs will use their social media platforms to direct potential customers to their website. It is there that you can provide those people with more interesting content and guide them down your sales funnel. Social media content can also increase your overall search ranking. For example, if a blog post you promote on social media is shared by your audience, it is more likely that Google will rank it higher for the relevant key word or phrase.

Build Better Relationships

Social media offers you the chance to connect with your customers in a way that traditional advertising does not. Social platforms shouldn’t be viewed as a means of blasting your sales pitch cheaply but rather as a route to enjoying better relationships with your customers. By creating a dialogue with your audience, you stand to better understand how to serve them and, in turn, how you can achieve business growth.

The benefits that you can expect to enjoy from well-managed social media platforms are numerous. Can you afford not to be social?

*Data from the We Are Social Digital in 2016 report.