Is your business on social media yet? How strong is your social media presence? Here in 2019 (and for all of the foreseeable future), social media marketing is going to be the bread and butter of successful marketing.
Why, you might ask? Well with over 2 billion users on Facebook, and several hundred million on the likes of Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter, it’s the easiest and cheapest place to find everyone. This is a trajectory that is only increasing, especially among the biggest rising consumer bases like Millennial buyers.
If you’re still weighing the benefits of social media marketing, here are the top 10 benefits of social media marketing to keep in mind. These are 10 things EVERY business owner should know!
1. Reach
Like I said, there are billions of people on social media. There is no place where you can reach more people in one consolidated platform than Facebook. It has over 2 billion users, which is an actual majority of all internet users.
The hundreds of millions of people on other social media sites, especially the likes of Pinterest and Instagram, have extremely engaged pools of users too.
This is an enormous opportunity to expand the reach of your business. It is extremely easy to access these users, and reach them with your brand’s imagery and story. By becoming extremely present on social media, you can get your product or service in front of these millions.
While having your website ranked in Google is important, it’s a very passive way of getting traffic. Social media helps you search out and find your prospective customers.
2. Accessibility
One of the most important things that you can EVER be as a business is reachable. The more ability your potential customers have to get a hold of you, the better chance they’ll buy from you.
In this day and age, the first place that customers tend to go to contact a business is Facebook. So by having an active, healthy presence on Facebook and Twitter, you make your business convenient, and accessible.
This is one of the biggest keys to good customer support. Bad customer support will get you bad reviews faster than any other issue, and being hard to reach is one of the biggest triggers for 1 star reviews.
Give your customers access.
3. Building A Following
Building a following around your brand is essential. The more people are following you, the more free advertising you’ll have. If you have a big social media following, every time you post new products, blog posts, or anything else you’re selling, it will be seen by your whole following… totally free.
In fact, a large social media following can be an extremely lucrative asset. A person with thousands of followers on Instagram, or Pinterest, would be considered an Influencer, and your endorsement of products would instantly be worth money.
Growing a big following from scratch on social media, however, takes a lot of time and consistency. Here are the 4 most effective ways to grow your social media following.
a. Post with consistency, and quality. Posting regular, engaging content is the best thing you can do. A few times a week on Facebook, once every other day on Instagram, 3 times per day on Pinterest is a good place to start.
b. Use the right keywords, #hashtags, and SEO. Each platform has its own set of best strategies. I give lots of advice on Young Retiree on how to create kill it on Instagram, and on Pinterest. It matters! Refine your posts, your hashtags, and your image to perfection. These are a few of my recent pins in screenshots below. I didn’t post these to group boards, and I have a fairly small following, but my views, saves, and clicks were still decent…
c. Make sure your content is easy to share! I can’t stress this enough. If your readers like your stuff, and they find it helpful, it’s likely that they will want to share it. This is one of the best ways for you to grow! Use a plugin like Social Warfare to put share buttons throughout your site. Social Warfare is my favorite, because it doesn’t slow down my site. 1 click, and your readers can share your content all over the internet!
d. Make your blog easy to follow! The #1 best way to keep your visitors, and turn them into followers, is by using MiloTree. MiloTree is a plugin that creates a customized pop up, inviting visitors to follow your email list, Pinterest, or any other social media you want. It’s the single most effective way to expand your following.
4. Budget Smart
Social media is a cheaper place to advertise than most other places, because it’s so easy to target specific groups. More on that in a minute, just keep reading.
On many social media platforms, like Pinterest, Quora, and Instagram, you don’t even need to pay a PENNY to be seen. Using the right hashtags and keywords, hundreds of people can find your content.
Facebook advertising is another cost effective way to advertise, because you can specify the exact people you want to advertise to. By doing this, you only invest money in reaching the exact people that you’re relevant to.
5. Keeping Lines Of Communication Open
Do you want to know one of the most crucial steps in successful sales? This is one that many sales people give up on way too quickly. Follow up.
Follow up is especially important with high ticket sales. Your customers may not buy on their first visit to your website. It may take several times noticing you before they hit the buy button and pull out their credit cards.
So how do you land sales? Keep the conversation going! Social media is a perfect place to keep conversations from going stale. It’s easy to shoot messages back and forth on Facebook, especially when most people are checking it several times per day anyway. Keep friendly chats going. Make friends.
6. Brand Trust
Most people my age (I’m 24), would never trust a business that doesn’t have a website. This is just as true with social media. A business that has a social media presence is seen as more up on the times, relevant, and established.
This causes consumers to trust the brand more. On top of this, it’s easier to have a more sincere, human voice on social media. Instead of seeming cold, stiff, or corporate, a business with a social media presence seems more personal.
If you don’t believe me, check out Wendy’s Twitter. The intern Wendy’s hired to manage their Twitter should be their employee of the decade.
7. Targeting
I alluded to this earlier, but social media lets you find very, very specific groups of people. Social media is about connection, and people connect over common interests. This results in hundreds of Facebook groups, Pinterest group boards, hashtags, and other collections of like-minded people.
This lets you target only the people that would be interested in whatever it is that you’re offering. Facebook ads, in particular, can be customized to seek and snag the exact person that you’re looking for.
Try it out! Do a quick search on Facebook of groups who would like what you sell. You may find a lot of enthusiasts ready to buy.
8. Networking
Social media is all about making friends, right? Well one of the smartest things you can do is make friends with people who do what you do, like what you like, and know how to do it.
You can find a wealth of knowledge and opportunity by networking with the right people. LinkedIn may be the most obvious networking platform, but you can make connections with hundreds of amazing entrepreneurs who can give you a leg up in business.
Many business owners who are making millions now got their start because of one lucky encounter.
9. Market Research
Remember how I mentioned that people of similar interests like to gather on social media? This is also a way that you can do some market research.
Follow boards, and join groups of the people that would buy your product. Listen to them. Read their posts. Check out what they like.
You will be surrounded by ideas all day long. This is how you can find solutions to the problems they are having, or find what will make them excited. It’s marketing research heaven.
10. Branding
Branding is an extension of brand trust. Social media is where you show people what your brand is all about.
What vibe are you going for? What is your theme? Colors, logo, imagery, tone, story… all of these things make a brand. The stronger you brand is, the more people will remember and connect with you. It’s psychological.
Social media is the biggest place where brand is established.
These are all things you need to know about the benefits of social media marketing! Don’t hesitate to take action on this. Investing in powerful social media branding will affect the future of your company.
Whether you’re just starting out, or you’ve been around for decades and still want to grow. Scaling on social media is the answer. If you need any more tips, hit me up! I will answer your questions the best I can.
I’m reachable on Facebook *wink
… and Pinterest *wink wink
Hello Jordan! I have just started my own business and want high rank on Google. Thank you for sharing benefits of social media marketing. This blog is very helpful for getting knowledge about social media marketing.
Hi Olivia, I’m glad you found it helpful! Thanks for dropping by!
Great information, I’m impressed most by the last point, Branding. Increased awareness of brand: Social media is one of the most cost – effective methods of digital marketing used to syndicate content and increase the visibility of your business. Implementing a social media strategy will greatly enhance your brand recognition as you will engage with a wide consumer audience.
Yes, you’ve got the right idea! It’s budget smart, AND it helps you to create a distinct name for yourself.
With the huge traffic social media platforms offer, online entrepreneurs must look to take advantage of these, to future advertise their business and services.
I just recently began using Facebook ads, and I’m beginning to see positive results from the ads. However, I want to know the best cost effective way to advertise on Instagram.
Hope to hear from you soon
Hey, that’s great that you’ve started to use Facebook ads! They’re really useful for creating super targeted advertising, because you can customize them to just show to relevant people, who would be interested in your blog.
Instagram is actually easier to use for free than Facebook. If you use the right hashtags you can get attention totally for free. Here’s a post I wrote about Instagram marketing tips!
There are a lot of tricks to finding the best hashtags for your posts. They work just like keywords. Don’t go for big, general ones that have millions of posts. Go for hashtags that have a few hundred thousands posts, or even a bit less. You’ll stand out a lot faster as a small account. Small accounts get buried quickly in larger hashtags.
Thanks for writing this article on top 10 benefits of social media marketing. I find this article full of informative and educative.it a know fact that social media users are going in millions day by day and it is important as a social media marketer to tap in the advantage of averting your product and services to them in all platform possibly known to you
Thanks for commenting! You’re right, there are few ways better than social media for getting your product in front of people.
Hello Jordan, Social media marketing is an indispensable tool in the hands of any online marketer. It is a great way of getting our products across to millions of people that use internet, one can easily say that the benefits of social media marketing are countless.
You have really summarized the benefits of social media marketing in your write up. Beginners in online marketing will learn a lot about the importance of social media marketing. Great write up. To your success.
Thanks so much! I’m glad you found it relatable, it’s definitely an essential. There are lots of marketers who are using social media out of sense of obligation, or because they’ve heard that it’s the right thing to do, but don’t know why it’s important, or how.
There’s always new stuff to learn!
Hello Jordan. Thanks for writing out this lovely article and I must say its a must for everyone to read and digest.I started my affiliate marketing business not quite long and I hope this post will be of help to me. Social media platforms are really helping business to grow more than we think this days. A business that lacks social media is dead. Thanks for the insightful article. Best regards
Thank you sir! I’m glad you found it helpful. Good luck with your new blog, there’s a HUGE opportunity there!
Social media marketing is a very good way to earn money through affiliate marketing. One major advantage of using social media yarn is because it is cheaper to run. Popular social media platforms offer sign ups for free of charge. Another advantage is the reach, social media has millions of users and definitely some of them are in need of your product or services.
Hey, thanks for commenting! Yes, social media is a great, affordable way to get some traffic and attention to your brand. It’s totally essential in contemporary marketing.