6 Reasons why you should use social media to market your business online

With about 3.725 billion active social media users, almost half of the world’s population makes use of social media. Every month, millions of people can be reached with advertising on the most popular social media channels. No wonder social media marketing has become a powerful resource for businesses, right?
You may still be wondering if social media marketing would benefit your business. The answer to your question is most likely yes, and here are the main reasons why.

1. To reach a specific audience

Most of your potential customers are spending time on social media. And not only a little of their time. In average, the several billion social media users worldwide spend over two hours per day on these platforms. Yet, instead of putting out a message to any user, you should prefer targeting a distinct audience that is more inclined to increase your conversion rate.

Depending on what you wish to advertise for, some social media channels may be more relevant for your business, as they will help you reach a specific audience. Indeed, some groups of users are more likely to use some social platforms rather than others. The users’ age and gender, but also their location, represent indicators to help you decide. If you are targeting a German audience, for instance, you should prefer the professional social network Xing to LinkedIn, which has more members in Germany than the latter.

2. To increase your brand awareness and loyalty

Marketing your business on social media can also increase your brand awareness and loyalty. Being present and involved on social media is an opportunity to make your brand more accessible to people. With posts offering knowledge about your brand and revealing its personality, you invite people to learn and talk about you. In this way, the visibility of your business, and thereby the awareness of your brand, will grow.

Social media is also a way for you to connect and develop a bond with your audience. If you build and preserve this relationship, and engage regularly with the users, you should be able to gain their trust. In fact, a strong customer relationship is often seen as showing that a company cares about its customers. Recommendations from friends and other acquaintances, which are often shared on social networks, will also build the trust in your brand. Over time, this feeling can evolve into loyalty towards your brand.

3. To increase your inbound traffic

When you share content on social media, you are providing people with the opportunity to have a look at your website. The more and the better your content is, the more visitors and visibility you will have, and therefore the more traffic you will benefit from. For this reason, publishing valuable and engaging posts with your social media accounts is essential, as it can contribute to bringing potential customers to your website.

4. To enhance your SEO ranking

Thanks to social media marketing, your SEO ranking may even be better. Today, just optimizing the content of your website is not enough anymore. Indeed, you should also think about off-page optimization, which includes backlinks as well as social media.

Although most search engines do not take social media directly into account, some social signals, such as likes and shares, can increase the authority of your domain and prove its trustworthiness. For Bing, for instance, the influence of the social media account linked to your website matters for how well the website ranks. The so-called influence is associated to how much your content is shared by your followers, namely their engagement.

Besides, on social media, the more your content is being shared, the more visibility you get. And with higher visibility, there are greater chances that people like bloggers, for example, notice your content and link to your website. To increase your chances of earning backlinks, you must also try to produce valuable and engaging content for your audience.

5. To acquire better insight about your customers

If you choose to market your business on social media, you have the possibility to gain better insight about your potential customers. On the one hand, you have access to analytical tools provided by several social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter. With these tools, you can learn more about your audience by studying, among other things, demographic values like gender, age, location, language and interests. Moreover, you can have a look at which of your posts are most liked, shared or register the best engagement rates. The overall online behavior of your audience will help you understand what appeals to them.

On the other hand, your presence on social media is in itself a tool to acquire more knowledge about your customers. Indeed, by simply examining what your audience likes, shares or even says about your brand, you may discover interests and concerns they have, which can help you create valuable content for them.

6. For its cost-effectiveness

Social media marketing is also cost-effective. These platforms allow you first and foremost to sign up for free. Thus, if you do not pay for advertisement on social media, time is the only investment you will have to make, in order to create valuable content and build a relationship with your audience.

That being said, should you decide to pay for social media advertising, you would not have to spend a great amount of money to be seen on the most popular social media platforms. By only investing a little money at a time in paid ads, you should be able to see a difference and benefit from your investment.

Article written by Laura Eloir, CAWEB Master’s.