Following on from our blog post where on the core components of Social Media strategy, today I will take a closer a look at why it’s important to keep your Social Media accounts active and the benefits you can gain.
However, before I start there is one thing your business needs know – there are no shortcuts to regular Social Media activity and you will need to allocate time and money in order to succeed in today’s Social Media community. It’s not enough to ‘just have’ the profile and sporadically publish 2-3 tweets a week, maybe even less.
The Benefits Of Active Social Media Profiles For Your Business
There are lots of perks that social media can generate for your business. The key benefits include (but not limited to):
Better Rankings
With social and search merging having an active social presence online is now essential as it’s believed social signals can help to improve your rankings. Searchmetrics’ study found that the higher the number of social signals you gain from the below networks the better the position of your website in SERPs:
- Google +1
- Facebook Shares
- Facebook Comments
- Facebook Likes
- Facebook Total
- Tweets
Therefore, creating and maintaining a strong profile could be hugely beneficial for your site’s visibility.
Brand Awareness
Social media offers your business a perfect way to be seen by your target audience’s eyes and build awareness around your brand/company. Remember that regular posts about the latest company, as well as industry, news will help your business be seen as an authority within the industry.
That’s not all…Social Media can increase more than awareness. A perfect example is Saatchi Art which showcases the latest work on their very visual Tumblr account;
So people who like art and scrolling through pretty images might be also potential customers who are willing to purchase.
More Traffic
New and regular high-quality content will help you keep your business/brand in mind and in front of the eyes of your current as well as potential customers. Your Social Media accounts are perfect for increasing the amount of times existing and potential clients are exposed to your company which in turn will have a positive impact on your website traffic.
According to Social Media Examiner study, 75% of marketers stated increased traffic as second best benefit they managed to gain from Social Media marketing.
However, don’t be a spammer and post only links to your website; make sure that 80% of the Tweets, Facebook updates, LinkedIn posts, etc are relevant to your industry and target customers and only 20% is about self-promotion.
Increase in conversions
With more people coming to your website from Social media there is a higher chance that also your conversion rates will be higher. Plus you can use your Social Media accounts to spread exclusive offers and discounts. Come up with an attractive offer and pair it with a strong call-to-action and you’re half way through to higher conversion rates. However, ensure that your customers feel that there’s value in clicking on your offers/ads/posts, and avoid making them feel that they’re being sold to.
If you’re sceptical about the effect of Social Media on sales, a latest study suggests that 77% B2C and 43% B2B companies have acquired clients from Facebook.(Source: HubSpot)
What Does Effective Social Media Management Look Like?
To reap all of the above mentioned benefits, and more, you must invest time and smart work. The five core activities of effective Social Media management that drives results include;
- Regular Social Media plan creation – this can be done on a weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual basis
- Regular analysis of Social Media activities, their successes/failure and performance against set goals
- Daily updates across all Social networks
- Daily customer service – Responding to user’s messages, comments and posts as soon as you can
- Daily engagement with the community
- Regular Brainstorming to find new ideas, content and create offers
Examples of effective Social Media marketing
Are you a one-man band?
Yes, you can still gain perks and increase your customer base with the help of the Social media world. If you don’t believe me, take a look at Michael Sinking’s twitter account;
Michael is a dentist based in New York who spends the time on Twitter to engage with his current as well as potential clients.
He offers his professional expertise for free which in turn helps drive traffic. He uses very interesting articles to post on his Twitter;
Do you operate in a very niche market?
Yes, you can still use Social Media to your benefit. Take a look at Mendez Fuel, a mobile gas station in Miami with over
How do they do it? They manage their profiles on a daily basis, post interesting updates and share mostly visual content from their gas station shop including photos of their latest products.
Useful Tools
You can find a lot of examples of small and big business who use their Social Media profiles to their advantage. It’s about testing and finding what works best for you and your target audience. I’ve listed a couple of great tools which will help you start. However, remember that these tools won’t do the job for you – you will need to take care of your Social Media activity on a daily basis.
HootSuite and Buffer are great Social Media management platforms which let you monitor and schedule posts across multiple social media accounts including Google+, Facebook, Twitter
- Simply Measured offers great free reports you can use to analyse your Social Media activity. These reports will help you analyse the effects and give you useful insights so you can improve your Social Media. I’ve tested them myself; they’re really useful and provide comprehensive reports that will save you time and provide you with actionable insights in no time. Plus you can save them as Excel spreadsheets!
The below content curation sites will help you find interesting content relevant to your industry:
Do you take care of your Social profiles on a regular basis? Do you have time and dedicated internal staff to manage your Social Media?
If you have, then good. But, if you don’t then you could be missing out on the benefits I mentioned above. Here at Koozai, we provide our clients with effective Social Media management which can help you reap the benefits that Social Media has on offer. If you have any questions please get in touch – we will be more than happy to help.
Image Credits
World social media network from BigStock
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