Why Social Media Marketing is Right for Your Business

Social media networks have enjoyed huge success rates over the last few years, and have attracted massive audiences. Many businesses and brands recognize the potential in being visible and active within such thriving communities, and put a lot of effort into maintaining a calculated presence over a variety of networks. Currently, over 800 million people actively use Facebook, over 50% of whom log on to Facebook on any given day. 350 million active users regularly access Facebook through a mobile device while on the go. The average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events. Twitter has an active user base of over 106 million, increasing by almost 300,000 users every single day.

With statistics like this, it should come as no surprise that the big question of marketing professionals is no longer:

“should our company be doing social media marketing?”

but rather:

“is our company doing social media marketing right?”

Social media marketing is more than just creating a profile for your business on Facebook or Twitter and waiting for the conversions to roll in. It is connecting with your audience on a human level over a variety of platforms, including social networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.), email marketing, and blogs, and requires a consistent maintenance commitment in order to succeed at delivering results. A successful social media campaign should engage its audience with content that will provide both a benefit to the audience as well as create incentive to return for more. The key to success of any social media strategy lies in how you view the process: it is not a sales tool, but rather a method to establish your company as an industry leader and expert, while engaging your audience with conversation, personality, and frequent exposure to your brand and its relevant content.

Some of the Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Although one of the most compelling benefits of a social media campaign is immediately obvious – it puts your brand in front of a huge audience and showcases your company’s existing expertise on the industry it serves – there are other hidden motives that drive businesses to utilize social networking as a major part of their marketing campaigns, such as:

• Low cost: Many companies are choosing to replace all or parts of their existing marketing efforts with a social media strategy, due to its relatively low cost. Although it can act as a replacement for traditional marketing when appropriate, social media is typically best treated as an inexpensive compliment to existing marketing efforts. Special promotions or offerings can be announced through both mediums and can even be intertwined for better results (for example: “visit us on Facebook for more details” or “follow us on Twitter to be automatically entered into a drawing for a prize”).
• Giving your brand a personality: Being able to interact one-on-one with an audience is a marketer’s dream. It gives a brand a personal touch, and allows your audience to be engaged in conversation, advice and opinions, all of which will in turn create a stronger sense of brand loyalty.
• Search engine optimization: Possibly one of the most important hidden benefits of social media marketing happens behind the scenes where you can’t immediately see it. By creating regular rich content, as well as generating links back to your website, your company may start to rank higher in search results for your relevant keywords.
• Environmentally friendly: Green is the new black. As many companies attempt to lower their eco-footprint, social media marketing becomes the marketing strategy of choice to offset their environmental impact.
• Social sharing and recommendations: Being involved and active in the communities of your target audience, and providing them with free content will inevitably result in your content being shared, retweeted and passed along. This is a powerful form of marketing that money simply cannot buy.