Social Media
5 Reasons Your Online Business Needs Social Media
Marketing online continues to evolve and grow and these days social media takes a front seat in most online marketing strategies as supports the growth of business. The reasons to use social platforms to engage and reach customers are plentiful; here are 5 of the main ones.
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Why do social media managers spend countless hours planning, posting, testing, and perfecting their social media presence online?
- There are 3 billion active Internet users and 2.1 billion of them have social media accounts.
- YouTube has more than 1 billion users, more than a 1/3 of all web users. Each and every day web visitors view hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube that generate billions of views.
- Facebook has nearly 1.4 billion users, that’s 47% of all Internet users. 4.5 billion Likes are generated daily and nearly 75% of Facebook’s revenue comes from mobile advertising. 936 million Facebook users login in at least once daily and 52% of marketers found a customer on Facebook in 2013.
- Twitter has 316 million monthly active users that 500 million tweets each day
- Google+ has 363 million users that hit the +1 button on 5 billion times per day
- Pinterest has 100 million users, 85% of which are women. 47% of Pinterest users purchase a product based on pins, with the average sale being $58.95. 67% of pinned content is from a business site and 82% of Pinterest users would rather follow a brand than a celebrity.
Impressed yet?
These stats are just one reason to use social media to market your business that really illustrate the reach that social media can have on your business, be it online and brick and mortar. Here are 4 more reasons to make social media a part of your marketing plan.
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Social media allows you to reach people at a more personal level. Many social media marketing experts explain that social media is about relationships building, that as a side effect brings about conversions for calls to action. When you connect with people and they connect with you, they are more likely to follow your brand and all it has to offer.
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Social media allows you to show off your best content, and highlight all your brand has to offer. Whether you use text, images, video, or all of the above, you can tailor your campaign to present and impress your target audience with the very best content, products, and services that your brand has to offer. Tailoring your campaign through social media allows you to meet many objectives, including, building brand reputation, customer engagement, a better customer experience through valuable information and any other goals that meet your marketing needs.
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Who isn’t sick of fighting for organic traffic when Google keeps wiping sites off their SERPS with one after another of their ongoing updates? Social media can bring a steady, long term, reliable and ongoing stream of traffic to your sites and blogs, without having to worry that some entity will come along and wipe you out.
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One of the greatest benefits of social media is that you have full control of what is presented about your company, brand, and website to your target audience. You can tailor your marketing plan to meet specific goals and not leave anything to chance. The multitude of tracking, and testing tools available, such as, Klout, SumAll, BuzzSumo, and TweetReach, just to name a few allow you to enhance and tweak your campaigns as needed to constantly improve your efforts to boost conversions.
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There is no better time than now to take advantage of all social media has to offer. If you have an online business and do not have a social media presence then you are behind the times, it’s really as simple as that.
There are many expert guides online to get you started, and educating yourself on the intricate process that is social media marketing is critical to your overall success.
There is also the option of hiring a social media marketing expert. Take care to choose a competent professional, it will not be cheap, but may well be worth it when they bring the results your business needs to succeed.
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What is the secret to being successful on social media?
The answer is simple: delivering value.
This might sound obvious to you, or perhaps it’s just obtuse and confusing. Either way, it’s undeniable and perhaps the best way to explain what I mean by this is to show you the opposite.
Which happens to be how most brands use social media…
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The way that a lot of businesses use social media is to set up their accounts and then occasionally post to them. They’re not posting regularly enough to be considered consistent but what’s worse is the nature of what they’re posting: posts talking about their products and services.
You’ve probably seen these kinds of social media pages in the past. They say things like:
“Our new POS is the best in the industry!”
“Check out our new range of clothing!”
“For service you can trust, give us a whirl”
The thing you have to ask yourself then is: why would anyone want to read that? What incentive are you giving for following your page?
This is something that a lot of businesses simply forget about: in order to get people to listen to them, they need to be offering something in return. The best litmus test you can always use is this: would you follow your own page?
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The solution is to turn your thinking on its head and to change the way you approach social media. Instead of thinking of this as a chance to promote yourself, think of it as a chance to provide an additional free service to your audience. This should be the same audience you’re trying to monetize but in this case you’re offering something completely free whether that is information, entertainment, news or inspiration. Either way, people need to look forward to your posts and they need to know what to expect.
Maybe you sell fitness products? In that case, you could provide a good service to your audience by posting new workout ideas or inspirational quotes every day. Maybe you sell clothes? In that case how about posting images of outfits to give people ideas?
Then, when you want to make a sale, you offer a genuinely exclusive discount. You have the ears and the trust of your audience and now you’re providing a limited time and exclusive opportunity. That’s how you influence through social media!
How to Create a Brand That People Will Love
If you want to make a big impact on the web, then it’s simply not enough to have a social account and a blog. You also need to make sure that there is a brand behind that social media account and blog – something that ties all of your posts and comments together under a instantly recognisable single banner and something that people will feel is more than the sum of its parts.
And you need to realise that a brand doesn’t just mean a logo. In order to have a real brand that has a base of raving fans, you need to know what it is that makes something like this work and the best way to approach building yourself an image and then gaining exposure for that image.
So What is a Brand?
So if a brand isn’t just a logo, then what is it?
Well, one obvious thing that a brand also needs is a catchy name. Your business/company needs a name and in all likelihood, this name will also be the name of your website. Having a brand like this for your website is one of the best things you can do right away to start getting attention for your business as it is easy for someone to search for your brand name and land on your website.
Google has actually stated that brands are far more successful at search engine optimization these days (although this is always subject to the ever changing algorithm!), while from a user’s perspective brands are also a lot more memorable and professional sounding. In other words, calling your website ‘FitLand’ will work much better than ‘FitnessAndHealthArticles’ as this is far too generic and not recognisable.
You also need a visual language. Once you’ve created your logo, you’ll have a basic color palette and maybe some images that will relate to your business and that will form the basis of these logos. Now you need to take those colors and shapes and work them into everything else you do. If your logo is red, your website and your social media pages need red accents. This consistency increases your brand recognition so don’t miss this step out!
Your Mission Statement
Another crucial component is creating a mission statement for your brand. Ideally this should be done first as it should underpin all your branding so it is probably the most important step.
So what is a mission statement? Basically it is a short paragraph or line that states what your business is about, what you do and why you do it. This is your goal, your vision and your commitment.
From here, you then have a more inspiring vision that you can use in order to inform your other choices – such as your choice of logo and name.
Now your logo and brand actually stands for something and when that’s the case, people can buy into it and really get behind you.
Creating Your Facebook Page
When you begin the enormous task of promoting yourself on social media, you need to ensure that you choose the appropriate social media channel for the specific message you’re sharing and for the audience you’re targeting. In other words, if your business is all about gardening then you might have a slightly older audience, in which case a channel like Instagram may not be the best place for you. Of course, you should always do your research.
The only real “must have” channel is Facebook; almost every business should have a Facebook page. This is simply due to the fact that it is the biggest social network in the world in terms of users and also comes with a number of powerful tools that you can use to promote yourself further.
So how do you go about creating your Facebook page and what can you do to help it thrive?
Facebook Pages – Some Advanced Features
Creating a Facebook page isn’t really that different to creating a profile page. Once you’ve set up a new page, all you then have to do is to start populating it with the usual information and some good eye catching images. That means a profile picture and a cover image – and these should should be something crisp, large and grabs your attention.
But, as always, the devil is in the details and there are a lot of cool additional things you can do to get more exposure and success for your new page…
Insights
You should definitely check out the ‘Insights’ tab along the top of your page. Here you can see which of your posts is performing well (and which aren’t) and how many new followers you’re getting on a regular basis. This information lets you see what’s working so you can do more of it!
Publishing Tools
Likewise, the publishing tools option is a great way to do things like drafting or scheduling post. The latter allows you to spend a day writing some posts and then schedule them to be posted automatically at pre-determined date and time.
Call to Action
There’s a link just over your cover image in the bottom right. This is your call to action button and you can use it to send visitors to your website, shop or even a squeeze page. It’s definitely worth adding and using!
Store
Did you know you can actually add a store to your Facebook page if you’re using WooCommerce or Shopify! This is a great way to increase your Facebook ROI!
Become a Local Business
If you have a physical business such as a high street store then be sure to let your visitors check in! Click the ‘About’ button, choose ‘Page Info’ and then insert your address; it’ as simple as that. Make sure to tick the option to let people sign in!
So there you have it; a few simple tips to ensure you get your new Facebook page off to a flying start…
Why Does Your Online Business Need Social Media? Part 5
As mentioned in the last post, the final reason for using social media marketing is:
Control
One of the biggest benefits of using social media marketing is that you have full control of what you present to your audience about your company, brand, and website.
You can tailor your marketing plan to meet specific goals and not leave anything to chance. There are a myriad of tools and apps that allow you to track and test your efforts. Take a look at Klout, SumAll, BuzzSumo, and TweetReach, if you want to enhance and tweak your campaigns as required to constantly improve your efforts to boost conversions.
In summary
So there you are. The 5 top reasons why your business needs social media are:
• Reach
• Relationships
• Showcasing your stellar content
• Traffic
• Control
There is no better time to take advantage of all social media marketing has to offer. If you have an online business and you don’t have a social media presence then you are far behind the curve and at a severe disadvantage from you competitors, it’s really as simple as that. And social media itself is also evolving with the increasing popularity of live video streaming platforms such as Periscope. Blab, Meerkat and Facebook Live. If you don’t keep up you can quickly get left behind!
There are many training courses online to help get you started, and educating yourself on crafting your social media marketing is critical to your overall success.
If you have the cash you could think about hiring a social media marketing expert to set up and manage your campaigns for you; just take care to choose a competent professional as it will not be cheap, but could be worth it if they bring the results your business needs to succeed.
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