Social media is gaining prominence rapidly in the business world. Many smart businesses are now using social media channels for targeted, cost effective marketing campaigns. In a survey recently conducted by Harvard Business Review, over 2,000 organizations were studied and nearly 80% of them were actively using social media.
Some of the benefits that accrued to these companies are increased brand awareness, increased website traffic, ability to develop more targeted marketing campaigns, and better understanding of their customers’ perceptions about their company. Here’s a brief discussion of some of the benefits your business can enjoy from active participation on social media channels.
Cost Effective Marketing
Social media networks are one of the cheapest but most effective marketing channels for any serious business. Many of the popular social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and Flickr are free to use. Even though they support paid advertising, most of the buzz they create for your business is done free of charge. You can set up contests, post comments and receive very useful feedback without spending any money on adverts.
Increased Brand Exposure
Another vital benefit that social media channels can offer your business is rapid exposure to a global audience. In fact, currently, social media provides one of the fastest and cheapest means to attract an international audience. According to statistics posted on JeffBullas.com, Google Analytics revealed that the blog attracted 172,443 unique visitors from 190 countries within 2 years. And this was done without spending any money on traditional advertising.
Increased Website Traffic
Social media channels can attract a massive amount of targeted traffic to your website. This is because you can easily find out exact what your customers and prospects want, from their comments. Then you can offer them answers to their questions in your blog posts and direct them to your website. In addition, the social recommendations made by your customers and fans will also attract traffic to your website.
Effective Customer Service
You can use social media channels to provide efficient support and customer care services to your clients. This gives your clients and potential customers the impression that your business is very responsive and caring. It also builds up trust and credibility among your clients.
Apart from answering your customers’ questions and providing information on how to use your products and services, you can also set up contests and surveys to get several other new clients interested in your service. From the answers given, you can find out what people like or dislike about your service and take steps to improve the quality of your service.
Those are some of the major benefits that using social media channels can offer your business. In order to enjoy these benefits, you need to know the right social media channels to use and participate very actively, on a daily basis. The daily attention and time required for this may put some strain on your human resources. So it is best to hire a competent agency to handle this job for you professionally.
