Why Is Social Media Marketing Important for Your Business?
Running a small business often means keeping a number of balls in the air at any given time – and one of the most important of these balls is marketing and promotion. For your business to succeed, people need to know about it – and that, my friends, is the nuts and bolts of marketing. When it comes to spreading the word about a business, there are a huge number of options available but, for the small business, there’s none more effective than social media marketing.
What is it?
Social media marketing can take a few different forms, including:
Posting – In its simplest form, social media marketing can be done by publishing posts on your company’s page to inform your followers about what you’ve been up to. One of the advantages of this kind of marketing is that it’s 100% free, and quick and easy to execute.
Content – When it comes to marketing, strong, thought leadership content is everything and, social media provides you with the perfect platform for sharing your killer content. Statistics from a digital marketing agency near Greenwich, show that 93% of Twitter users are happy for brands to join in conversations on the platform; making this a huge opportunity for businesses to share their content.
Advertising – Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram offer Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising which allows users to create adverts and then choose an audience based on a number of demographics.
Many businesses choose to combine two or all three of these methods to form a super-charged social media marketing strategy.
Why is social media marketing important for my business?
There are a great number of reasons that social media marketing is important for your business – and here are some of the main ones:
Find your customers where they live – There are around 4.48 billion social media users worldwide and, the majority of these spend a significant amount of time on their chosen platforms. It makes good sense to focus your marketing on the places where your potential customers hang out and, this means that, if you’re not marketing on social media, you’re missing out. Finding an affordable SEO company in your local area can be incredibly beneficial for your business.
Grow your squad – Social media is one of the quickest and cheapest ways of building a contact base for a small business. By offering incentives for engagement such as likes and shares, you’re able to gain the important leads that your business needs.
Showing your authority – Whatever kind of business you’re in, your goal is to set yourself up as a thought leader in your industry. Writing great, high value content and sharing it on social media is a tried and tested way of showing that you know your onions, thereby helping you to snag those leads. 91% of B2B actively use social media – which means that almost all of your potential leads are on these platforms right now.
The talent trap – Social media marketing is a fantastic way of attracting top talent to your business. Many businesses use this tool to showcase their company culture, including videos and testimonials from existing staff. In 2021, 79% of job hunters use social media to look for opportunities which, in the age of ‘The Great Resignation’, makes this a vital tool for businesses looking for new talent.
Create brand champions – Collecting followers for your social media pages is not just about popularity – these people can be your greatest secret weapon when it comes to marketing your business. Opening a dialogue and engaging properly with your social media followers can help you to turn them into brand champions; people who will share your content and actively promote your business for you.
Social listening – Before social media, we really didn’t have the tools to know what our customers were saying about us; unless we began to follow them around (and we really wouldn’t recommend this). Having a social media presence allows you to take advantage of sentiment analysis / social listening tools to give you an idea of what people are saying about you and your business. Simple and affordable, these tools allow you to sweep the internet looking for mentions of your brand; thereby giving you the chance to get an idea of how people feel and, more importantly, allowing you to nip any issues in the bud before they become a problem.
Crunching the numbers – Even if you’re only spending a small amount on your marketing, it’s important to know what kind of ROI (Return On Investment) that your efforts are gaining for you. With most forms of offline marketing, it can be really difficult to quantify the results of your marketing work. With social media marketing, you have whole suites of analytics at your disposal which enable you to quickly and easily measure your results. With social media marketing, you’re also able to perform important A/B testing on your campaigns to see what’s working for you and, more importantly, what’s not.
Conclusion
In 2021, social media marketing and SEO go hand in hand and, while you can, of course, perform these activities in-house, this is rarely the most effective – or cost effective way of getting the best results. Hiring the best SEO Company London gives your business access to social media marketing experience and expertise without the expense of hiring a full time, dedicated member of staff. As more and more businesses and individuals begin to operate almost exclusively online, social media marketing for your business is more important than ever, and is the key to gaining the leads that your brand needs as we enter a new year.