Why are social media platforms so important for business growth?
Social media has become an integral part of many businesses’ marketing strategies, and with good reason. According to most recent statistics, 58.4% of the world’s population now uses social media1, giving businesses the opportunity for exposure all over the world at the touch of a button.
Our latest intern here at JHPR, Harry Holden, has complied together a few top tips on why businesses should be utilising social media to market their services and branding, if they aren’t already…
By using social media, businesses can expand on and create new relationships with their target audiences, and they can receive feedback much easier and quicker – the immediacy of social media provides a viable way to deal with any grievances or queries customers may have in real time through formats such as live chats, FAQs and online surveys.
This does however mean that businesses need extra manpower in order to be able to reply to queries efficiently as brands have to make sure they are able to respond to a customer’s question or comment promptly. Failure to reply in good time may leave customers feeling abandoned and frustrated which could result in losing confidence in the brand.
Another benefit of using social media for a business is that it creates an easy avenue for creating a visual, online presence which, if done effectively, further solidifies a brand’s identity. This could lead to trust in the brand and increased loyalty which, in the long term, will most likely result in increased sales and business longevity.
It is also worth mentioning that, as social media is constant and available, there is always opportunity for someone to see it – this is hardly surprising considering users spend, on average, two and a half hours a day on social media2.
This does mean however that it is important for businesses to put in the research and suss out when is the best time to schedule their posts – audiences don’t want to be bombarded with multiple posts at a time but they also want to be able to rely on a businesses’ constant online presence and availability, so getting that balance is really important – a tricky task for a social media marketer as this takes time to get right, but it’s worth it.
One of the biggest reasons to use social media in terms of a marketing strategy is that businesses are not only able to look at detailed insights into their own company – they can also look at what competitors are doing and see what is working for them, meaning firms can then plan and tweak their own future strategies, to keep up to date with trends and successful campaigns and stay ahead of the game.
Being able to measure how well and how often posts are being interacted with will also give businesses valuable insight into what is working well and where perhaps more focus and time should be spent – businesses can do this by looking into online engagement stats such as impressions, reach, website taps, followers and likes. Keeping a social media report is always a good idea so that businesses can compare month on month how they are doing.