Five major social media benefits for your business

1. Increased brand awareness and recognition
Social media is able to defy the limitations and restrictions of space and reach audience members worldwide. Entrepreneurs using social media marketing techniques are able to amplify their brand's exposure and recognition, thereby generating increased sales leads and additional customers for their business. Every opportunity businesses get to increase their brand visibility is valuable and social media is able to do this on a large scale. Entrepreneurs are able to interact with existing clients through social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter and business blogs while marketing and advertising to potential clients at the same time.

2. Content can be shared easier and faster via social media

In the past, traditional marketing techniques had to be used in order to reach local and global audience members. Not only was this exorbitant in cost, but it was also time-consuming. Today, social media enables businesses to relay information easier and faster, regardless of the geographical location. Through social media, content can be shared instantly to a wide range of audience members. This is beneficial as the chances of generating new customers for your business are increased by the number of people exposed to your brand.

Content also has the possibility of going viral. When content goes viral, the amount of people exposed to the content is limitless. Publishing content via social media channels is a good way to increase your brand's visibility, generate new leads and escalate traffic to your website. This is why it is imperative to establish effective content marketing techniques. Remember to first identify your target audience, as this will enable you to generate appealing content that is relevant, entertaining and informative for your audience. If you produce noteworthy content, using tactics such as newsjacking and clickbait, this will increase the chances of your content being noticed or shared on a social media channel.

One of the many advantages of sharing content via social media is that it allows for instant feedback from your consumers. Acknowledging everyone that connects with you via social media is important, as this enables you to establish a relationship with your audience. Remember that social media lurkers are watching how you interact with others, so always be respectful, positive and helpful.

3. Audience/target insights can be acquired via social media:

Knowing vital information about your audience members is extremely valuable. Information, such as your audience’s age, gender, location and interests can be acquired via social media tools such as Facebook insights. This is useful because acquired knowledge about your audience enables you to implement creative and unique advertising and marketing strategies that resonate with your audience. This usually results in increased conversion rates.

4. Decreased marketing costs.

Marketing using traditional media methods can be costly. Research has indicated that spending just six hours a week on a social media channel is enough to generate new leads and increase traffic. Even though you can spend money via social media channels through tools such as paid advertising, this can be monitored closely and your budget can be increased accordingly. This is beneficial seeing as social media marketing is able to reach a large group of people in a minimum period of time. Social media also enables businesses to experiment with a variety of marketing messages and approaches. By using social media measurement tools, entrepreneurs are able to establish which marketing messages and approaches are more effective. Spending time developing your content strategy can dramatically improve traffic results.

5. Increased inbound traffic.

Without social media and other marketing tactics, brands are limited to people already familiar with their products and services, so social media sites create an opportunity to reach and generate new leads. It also gives companies the opportunity to convert any followers into potential customers, and brands become more humanised by interacting via social media channels. The more content and social media profiles you generate, the more exposure and inbound traffic you will generate for your brand. This usually results in increased leads and higher conversion rates.

Social media is becoming a crucial tool when marketing your products and services. Not only is it one of the fastest ways to expose your content to audience members, it also enables companies to gain increased brand exposure, drive traffic to websites and generate new leads. How has your business benefited from social media?