8 Ways Social Media Benefits Your Business

8 Ways Social Media Benefits Your Business

When social media first took off, it was easy for people to write it off as frivolous. This is a stark contrast to the present day, when a company that hasn’t plastered itself across Facebook, Twitter, and the like is considered an oddity at best and utterly behind the times at worst. The spread of social media in business has happened for a reason – it works. Here are eight easy ways that social media benefits your business.

1. Boost Your Brand

In the 21^st Century, your social media – not your television commercials, strategically placed billboards, or even your storefront – is where people learn about your business. It’s as much a part of your brand as anything else. Keep things professional just as you would if you were dealing with your customers face-to-face. Be sure to use your logo and post any relevant pictures of the goods and/or services that you sell. You will also want to include a description of your business, its mission statement, its location, and just what it is that sets you apart from your competition.

2. Inform Your Customers

Few tools are as good at spreading information as widely or as quickly as social media. And thanks to smartphones (every one of which is effectively a relay for social media), you can pump that information out to customers whether they’re riding the bus to work or simply checking their notifications first thing in the morning. Obviously, you will want to have your business’s location (if it’s a physical store), phone number, hours, and website posted. You should also use this opportunity to keep the public posted on any special offers, sales, or promotions offered by your business.

3. Don’t Let Them Forget You

People’s attention spans are shorter than ever. Maintaining a consistent presence on social media keeps your business in the forefront of your customers’ minds and makes them less likely to be distracted or snatched away by the competition. Posting irregularly or only a handful of times a month isn’t going to cut it. Draw up a posting schedule for your different profiles. You might even consider using analytics to figure out which times and which days your posts will reach the widest possible audience. Services like Hootsuite and Zoho Social allow you to post one message across different social networks – perfect for entrepreneurs looking to streamline their approach.

Click here for more on how to capture your audience’s attention.

4. Provide Relevant Information

Your business’s social media is NOT for personal use. Keep all those cute selfies of you and your sweetheart on your own private page where people care to see them. And unless you’re in the food industry, you won’t want to post pictures of what you fixed up for lunch, no matter how much it has you salivating. Keep your content related to your business and chosen industry. You will be more likely to attract serious customers if you’re seen as a someone who takes their business seriously, too.

5. Networking

Probably the most obvious way to utilize social media is for networking. Include links to your different pages on your website, your business cards, and in your email signature. This will help bring in new followers to your pages and make it easier for potential partners to reach out to you. You can also bring in more followers by sharing the page with your friends and encouraging your followers to share it, too. The more followers and likes your page has, the more reputable it will look to people just discovering it.

6. Call to Action

Just like any other method of advertising, don’t forget to include calls to action when you post on social media. Informing your customers won’t do you much good if they don’t know what to do next! This is something that you will want to apply a little creativity towards. Marketing is a tricky game and coming on too strong with a sales pitch will sometimes push people away.

7. Engage with Customers

This is perhaps the most important part of social media when it comes to your business. You need to make your customers enthusiastic about what you do and keep them engaged. A good way to accomplish this is by including pictures with every post. People are far more likely to pay attention to posts with images as opposed to plain old boring text. You also need to think about what demographics you are hoping to attract and tailor your content to best capture their attention.

8. Experimentation

When you first start using social media for your business you might find that you aren’t immediately getting the flood of new customers that you had hoped for. Don’t worry! This is to be expected. Think of it as more of a feature than a bug. Social media benefits businesses the most when they try new techniques for advertising and reaching their audiences. There are plenty of services that offer analytics for social media, such as the aforementioned Buffer and Zoho Social, that will help you monitor what posts are getting attention and what time you can expect the most traffic. Adjust your strategies accordingly!

Looking to start a business or grow your current business? Contact FL Patel Law today by visiting our website or calling 727-279-5037.