No matter what your business is, it can benefit from capitalizing on social media! Check out these tips for some insight as to how you can make it work for you!
1. Social media can help you learn about your audience.
For businesses in any industry, the key to success is knowing your audience. Social media makes this easier then it ever has been before. With tools like Facebook Insights in Hootsuite you can learn the dominant languages spoken among your social media audience, as well as their age and gender. This knowledge can help you cater campaigns and product offers to your target audience, which will provide you a better return on investment.
2. When you know your audience, you target more effectively.
Geo-targeting is an effective way to send your message out to a specific audience or demographic based on their location. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have tools that allow you to communicate the right kind of content to your audience. For example, in Hootsuite you can target by ‘Location’, ‘Language’, ‘Age’, ‘Gender’, ‘Relationship status’, ‘Interested in’, and ‘Education’ on Facebook, and ‘Country(s)’ on Twitter.
3. Social media helps you find new customers and expand your audience.
Social networks like Twitter allow small businesses to locate their current customers or seek out potential customers. For example, if you open a sandwich shop in the neighborhood, you can create a geo search in Hootsuite to locate anyone tweeting about needing a sandwich within your area. After locating those tweeting about sandwiches, you can start reaching out to them, and invite them to come try a sandwich at your new place!
4. Social media allows you to receive instant feedback from your customers!
Social media for business gives you instant access to positive or negative feedback, which provides you with valuable insights on the customer perspective. You can ask your followers for their opinion on a new product, or they can leave reviews on your pages. Social media provides easy access for them to share their thoughts on your products and service.
5. Improve market intelligence and get ahead of your competitors with social media.
With social media monitoring you can gain key information on your competitors, therefore improving your market intelligence. This kind of information will allow you to make strategic business decisions in order to stay ahead of your competition. For example, you can create searches in almost all social media platforms to monitor mentions of your competitor’s name or product. Based on your search results, you can improve your business to offer something your competitors are missing.
6. Social media can help increase website traffic and search ranking.
So you built a website for your company, now what? One of the best benefits of social media for business is using it to increase your website traffic. Not only does social media help you direct people to your website, but the more social media shares you receive, the higher your search ranking will be.
7. Social media helps generate leads for one third of the cost.
With all this new traffic opportunity on your social media, you can gain access to organic leads without dropping a cent. You can even promote your brand awareness for a fraction of the cost through your social media channels. Like mentioned, you can target your audience specifically, even see who is following your competitor. You have a sea of people that you know are interested to use as leads.
8. Create meaningful relationships with customers through social media
Social media is great for creating meaningful relationships with your customers. You can be communicating with your consumer before, during, and after business has taken place. This kind of social media dialogue between brands and customers is something traditional advertising will never achieve.
