Any idea on what could be the total number of social media users across the globe? Well, it’s around 3.78 billion users presently worldwide which, is without any doubt surprisingly huge. So, the answer to many of our queries on what are the benefits of using of social media is very much clear from this stat. Isn’t it! Considering the fact that 73% of the marketers rely on the unparalleled power of social media for promoting their businesses, you can understand how many opportunities it can hold for your business. Hence, it has undeniably become a key requisite for businesses to invest their time and money in social media practices for connecting with the audience.

“Social media will help you build up loyalty of your current customers to the point that they will willingly, and for free, tell others about you.” – Bonnie Sainsbury, Founder and CEO of Social Media Smarter

The utility of social media isn’t limited to help you fulfil any particular business goal. Rather it has the potential to contribute to the overall growth and progress of your business in a consistent manner. Be it brand management, customer engagement, online reputation management, or sales generation, it actually helps in improving the scope of your business in every possible way. Here in this blog, we would help you understand some of the major benefits of promoting your business via social media.

Improved and faster communication

Social media platforms have helped customers to reach your customer service representatives faster than the conventional means. It allows businesses to address and respond to the customer grievances more promptly and easily as well. Though there might be some challenges that you still need to face depending on the type of customer grievances and industry, the line of communication has become much better compared to the old days when it was way more difficult for the consumers to reach you with their queries or complaints. Customers can easily give real, authentic feedback on your products or services which, would greatly help you to evaluate your business processes or performances for further improvements.

Enhanced brand awareness

Social media is ever-expanding and so, you can consider it as a place for reaching or connecting with all your existing as well as prospective customers. A well-planned social media strategy can greatly work in boosting the level of brand awareness and foster better communication with the audience. What you need to do is create a profile in each of the popular social media platforms and ask all your employees and business associates to share or like for increasing your reach. As you start connecting with your customers, you will be able to improve your online reputation and this in turn, will lead you to explore a number of intangible benefits.

Increased online visibility

Social media relationships allow you to get quality backlinks for your website, which undoubtedly helps in improving its SEO performance. Social media helps you collect different types of links for creating a productive backlink profile and also sends targeted signals to the search engines such as Google for making sure that the popular content is always shareable and visible easily. Google has accepted the fact that though the likes, followers, shares, favourites, or backlinks on social media platforms do not work as direct ranking signals, there’s certainly a relation between the social media popularity or activity of a brand and its rank in the search engines. This is how you can understand how social media aids in improving the online visibility of a brand.

Improved website traffic

A strong social media presence is always going to help you in maximizing the amount of website traffic of your brand. With a social media promotion strategy, you would be able to reach different types of audience in an impactful, entertaining, and personal way and demonstrate your product or service offerings to the potential customers with whom you wouldn’t have been able to connect without having a social media presence. This is the reason marketers consider it as one of the most cost-effective ways of increasing website traffic rapidly.

Enhanced branding campaign

Social media has become an elemental part of a branding campaign for businesses irrespective of its nature, size, or industry. Though depending on your sales structure or nature of business, you might not see any prominent increase in conversions due to your social media presence compared to other marketing mediums, you would surely be able to increase the reputation or impression of your brand and strike a difference in the market. Messaging via the social media profiles of your business would actually help you to discuss about what are the main needs or requirements of your customers and fine-tune your business processes accordingly to deliver what they want. With better connect with customers, you would not only get the scope to improve your offerings further but also earn an enviable brand reputation as well.

Detailed competitor analysis

Social media allows you to learn from your competitors by finding out how they are promoting their business. Your ultimate focus should always be to grab the interest of your potential audience by implementing the most effective social media strategy. Going through the social media activities of your competitors, you will be able to know more about your target audience, most ROI-driven practices, ongoing trends, and better ways to connect with the customers. Irrespective of whether it’s organic SMO (Social Media Optimization) or SMM (Social Media Marketing), you need to learn how the dominant market players are strategizing the campaign to achieve remarkable results.

The bottom line

Business objectives vary from organisations to organisations. Having said that, it is important not to blindly follow the SMO or SMM practices without analysing each of them and finding out which one will be the most appropriate for your business. It is highly recommended to seek professional expertise of industry-leading social media marketers who will not only clear your doubts on what are the benefits of using social media for businesses but also develop a unique social media campaign that will be specifically meant to fulfil your business goals.

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