- What is the purpose?
- What are the advantages/disadvantages?
- Example eg. viral content
The Internet Advertising Bureau UK did some research into the power of social media. They found out that the average age of customers that interacted with social media were 39 years old of which 84% were female. 86% of consumers are accessing social media while at home with 59% choosing to use their laptops, 31% using their smartphones, 30% using desktop and 12% using tablets.
80% of consumers said they would be more inclined to buy more often in the future because of a brand’s presence on social media, with 83% of consumers saying they would trial a product because of a brand’s presence, emphasising the importance and power of the channel.
An example of this was with Heinz’s new product launch around ‘Snap Pots.’ Taking a look at the Snap Pots activity across an eight-week period showed that consistently posting maintains momentum and mindshare. Missing a week’s post for a new product you’re promoting can mean you have to play catch up the next.
1. Social media helps you deliver better customer service
Twitter is often a first port of call for many customers who have pre-sales or support related questions. Leaving customer questions to go unanswered makes a business look unprofessional and like they just don’t care, so it’s crucial that you are visible on the social networks that your customers are using, and that you are regularly monitoring all of your channels for brand mentions and customer questions.
Real-time communication helps to make happy customers which in turn creates brand evangelists who drive positive brand sentiment. I’ve seen customers converted time and time again thanks to businesses answering pre-sales questions promptly; being active on social media really is a great way of positively influencing sales.
2. Social media drives brand building & differentiation
Social media makes it easy to improve brand awareness and build your brands identity. You can effectively establish your brands personality and give your business a human voice that people can relate to.
Connecting on an emotional level or showing some personality are both effective ways of helping your brand stand out from your competitors.
3. Social media helps you to manage your reputation
Managing your reputation online is a critical part of any marketing strategy and social media provides you with a fast and effective way to do this. When dealt with swiftly and sensitively comments and complaints can be dealt with effectively, this instant feedback demonstrates high levels of customer service and can effectively diffuse negativity and resolve any issues that the customer may have.
Negative sentiment can often be turned into positive in a very public way. Such a visible demonstration of strong customer service and problem resolution can have a very powerful effect. The customer is now happy and won’t go on to post bad reviews and warn their friends not to use the company, instead, they are more likely to tell them that the company provides great customer service.
4. Social media helps increase trust in your business or brand
With so many alternatives to choose from, customers are often overwhelmed and want an easy way to authenticate a business that they are dealing with for the first time.
Seeing that you are active on social media helps to fill potential customers with trust, it signals that you care about your customers and should anything go wrong, that it will be easy to contact you.
5. Social media allows you to obtain real customer insights
Customer insights can drive the development of social media campaigns and shape strategic decisions, helping you to make your website content and product or service offerings more attractive and relevant to your customers. Social media makes it quick and easy for businesses to obtain feedback from customers, which will give you a clearer idea of brand sentiment and help you identify common pain points you can address.
6. Social media is a great way of promoting your content
We all know how important content marketing is, not only in terms of SEO, but in order to attract new customers. Help increase awareness of each new blog article or news post that you publish, by shouting about them on social media.
Social media when used in conjunction with high quality content creation is a highly effective way to attract new customers to you and also helps you to build authority in your area of expertise.
Social media when used in conjunction with high quality content creation is a highly effective way to attract new customers to you and also helps you to build authority in your area of expertise.
7. Social media helps you keep customers engaged with you
Social media is a great way of keeping your business or brand in the mind of your customers. This means you can actively influence purchasing decisions and helps to foster customer loyalty and encourage repeat purchases.
8. Social media will drive website traffic
Being active on social media will help you increase the amount of traffic that your website receives. Successful social media activities will always improve the amount of traffic referrals your website receives, playing an essential initial role in your sales funnel.
Social media as an SEO ranking signal is increasing in importance. Being talked about and mentioned on social media is a positive signal that shows you are popular and have content worth sharing and talking about. This in turn drives Google to regard your website as being more authoritative, which is one of the many signals that helps your website rank better in organic SEO.
Small businesses would also benefit a lot from using social media.
1. Branding
Social Media Marketing can create a recognisable identity for your product or service. This is extremely
important for a small business. Social Media tools can get the word out about
your brand in a way that promotes online conversation and creates buzz.
important for a small business. Social Media tools can get the word out about
your brand in a way that promotes online conversation and creates buzz.
2. Word of mouth marketing
Exposure is a key to growing your small business. Word of mouth may not generate business but with social media, you can create buzz around your business and brand. More than 80% of online marketing firms agree social media engagement is based upon social interaction between the customer and the business.
3. Reputation management
Social Media tools let you keep an eye on what other people and sites are saying about your name, company, or brand online. You can then use the insights to fix any problems, if need be. You could use forums and message boards to answer questions professionally, honestly, and correctly, which will earn you respect as an expert in your niche. People will look to you for answers.
4. Find out what works and what doesn't
Your business does not move forward unless you understand your prior faults. Social media gives you a chance to look at your prior engagement year over year, to find out what worked and what did not work. By doing so, you can review your social media metric tools and engagement score.
5. Helps with search engine rankings
Social media also helps you move up in the search engine rankings because of links. Many social news sites and social networking sites have “follow” links in their profile pages. These “follow” links can provide your online properties with a higher ranking on search engines such as Bing.
6. Cost-effective marketing and advertising alternative
Social media marketing shouldn’t cost a small business nearly as much as traditional advertising. And, if you do it yourself, it might not cost a dime. However, it will cost you time. Depending how much your time is worth, it might be worthwhile to hire someone to help with the social media marketing. But, all in all, social media marketing is just a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing and advertising.
Social media is becoming more and more of a necessity each day for businesses ranging from big corporations down to your average corner shop. Along with a clearly defined identity and already proven to work marketing tricks, social media is a great way of boosting your business both economically and brand wise.
2. What are the different types of social media?
- The effectiveness of each
- B2B vs. B2C
Social Networks - Services that allow you to connect with other people of similar interests and background. Usually they consist of a profile, various ways to interact with other users, ability to setup groups, etc. The most popular are Facebook and LinkedIn.
Bookmarking Sites - Services that allow you to save, organize and manage links to various websites and resources around the internet. Most allow you to "tag" your links to make them easy to search and share. The most popular are Delicious and StumbleUpon.
Social News - Services that allow people to post various news items or links to outside articles and then allows it's users to"vote" on the items. The voting is the core social aspect as the items that get the most votes are displayed the most prominently. The community decides which news items get seen by more people. The most popular are Digg and Reddit.
Media Sharing - Services that allow you to upload and share various media such as pictures and video. Most services have additional social features such as profiles, commenting, etc. The most popular are YouTube and Flickr.
Microblogging - Services that focus on short updates that are pushed out to anyone subscribed to receive the updates. The most popular is Twitter.
source
3. How do you implement a social media strategy?
- What are the elements?
- How to measure this eg. return of investment (ROI), evaluation
- Importance of strategy
Start by defining your goals
Define your target audience
Research the platforms
Plan your content
Build and develop your social media presence
Maintain your profiles
Hire a social media manager
You can find more in depth here.
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