The Power of Social Media & Marketing

 

By Anandi Vara

 With 74% of people stating that they use Facebook for professional purposes, it is no wonder that social media marketing can be one of the most helpful tools in building your brand. And no, not just with dog memes! Social media is a great way to use real audience insights to build strong and engaging content that highlights the capabilities of your business. Here are just a few ways that social media can really help your brand:

1.      Brand awareness – the first thing most people think of when they hear ‘social media marketing’ is the promotion of products. Buy buy buy! Whilst social media is indeed a great way to help boost sales, sometimes brand awareness and loyalty can be more significant in the long term. You decide how you want to position your business, what voice you want to adopt and what overall look and feel you want your business to have.

 

2.      Influence – A common preconception with social media is that once you’ve made your brand pages, followers will magically appear. It requires a lot of hard work in creating relevant and consistent content that speaks to your target audience. Do this and you’re golden. As your following grows, you will naturally see that your influence in the market also grows. From here you can attract new customers, partner with other brands, work with influencers… the possibilities are endless.

 

3.      Community – The social sphere is one of the best places to grow a community around your brand. It’s a place where people can share photos and experiences and also review products and give recommendations. Social media lends itself quite naturally to encourage conversations between customers and between brands and their customers. It helps to give your business a human element so that people know they are talking to another person rather than a machine. In the UK, 40% of people think it’s important that companies they purchase from have a strong social media presence showing that social is not only great in attracting new customers, but also keeping your existing ones too.

 

4.      Traffic to your website – Whenever you post branded content on your social pages, not only you are reminding people that you are here and that you are open for business, but you’re also giving them a reason to click through to your website. Whip up some enticing copy, pair it with some eye-catching visuals and you’ve got the winning combo.

 

5.      Insights – Who doesn’t love a bit of data? As a business, you can use social media to gain invaluable insights about your online audience and also your industry as a whole. Simply by monitoring the activity on your profiles you can get a snapshot into your customers’ interests, hobbies, and opinions. You can then use these insights to create engaging content relevant to your audience.

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