Billions of people worldwide use social media to search for knowledge and entertainment, connect with family and friends, and express themselves. This space is getting wider daily, dominating almost every aspect of our lives, relations, moods and businesses.
What is social media?
Social media is an internet-based form of communication. A social media platform is an online sphere that targets a certain group of people with similar mindsets, demographics and interests.
Each social media platform sets its own tone, user interface, usability and the business aspect through which it can generate revenue based on its business model.
Social media platforms include blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, social networking sites and applications, photo-sharing sites, instant messaging, video-sharing sites, podcasts, widgets, virtual worlds, cell phone apps, networking games, and more.
Power of the People!
It is “social” because people “socialise”! People control it.
People tend to “communicate”. Information runs between a “sender” and a “receiver” directly, instantly, one-to-many-and-back-again method.
No limit; information runs around freely and virally. Any topic can be discussed directly among constituents, regardless of their physical location.
This is unlike traditional media like TV, Radio and Newspapers that depend on one-way communication! The sender controls the process.
Thus, the power of the people changes the game. Social Media dominates!
Power of social media for business
Businesses are based on people, and it is targeting! Where people are found, money is there!
It is about what, how and when to start grabbing it. According to sproutsocial, 55% of consumers know about a new brand/product on social media.
It is now about being globally recognised.
Traditional marketing communication methods are declining in favour of social media!
Organic or paid?
One of the many benefits of marketing of social media marketing is that it can be totally free. Make sure your content and material are relevant and valuable; thus, your product/service can go viral organically without paying a penny to any social media platform!
On the contrary, paid campaigns are targeted at a specific target audience, and there is an allocated budget for it in the business marketing plan.
It is crucial to differentiate between these terms while social media marketing is mentioned.
What are the top five benefits of Social Media marketing?
1. You are getting noticed via SEO!
Most social media platforms send signals and data to search engines via SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Briefly, it is the ranking of a website whenever someone searches for something using a search engine. The order of web links that are seen first! Many factors contribute to higher search engine ranking, and social media is a major one!
FEUR Media House offers SEO Services to help you get a higher ranking for your website.
2. Improving Brand Loyalty
Social media networks allow for direct and (almost) real-time two-way communication. Brands should take advantage by being available to respond to their questions, inquiries, comments, and complaints.
Over time, you build a rapport with your followers, gain their trust, turn them into customers, and eventually make them loyal to your service/brand/product/page.
Loyal followers will act as brand advocates later on, and their engagement will be crucial to your online image and will be reflected on SEO ranking.
In today’s highly competitive market, the customers have more and more choices. Brand loyalty is becoming more critical than ever.
Using the power of social media properly will be a huge advantage in improving it.
3. Boost your brand awareness
You can increase your brand recognition by using the right tools and the proper content material.
While pursuing presence and recognition online, try to focus on a few social media platforms to be easier to maintain. Pick quality over quantity. Each platform has a different demographic that you need to link to your
Try to follow a social media strategy, stick to it, and ensure it is relevant to your overall marketing plan.
Make sure to refine your page bios, polish your cover photo and update your contact information.
FEUR Media House helps you create effective awareness campaigns and plan a social media strategy to spread your brand awareness among your targeted audience and potential customers.
4. Crowdsourced and User-Generated Content (UGC)
Your customers can participate in creating your content. Another important advantage of social media is that you rally your customers to work for you as a team of marketers!
You can encourage your fans and followers to deliver user-generated content on social media.
Ask them to post photos or videos along with your branded hashtag or write down their impression about your new promotion, packaging, specific product, etc.
You can even ask them to participate in your future marketing plans by sharing their thoughts. At the same time, you collect these data immediately and directly with a clear direction of their demographics.
Next, your social media team can track the hashtags, collect the content they post and reply to them. This creates an engagement with your followers and encourages them to come back and revisit your page.
That way, you are not receiving the content, but others post it on social networks. It is being seen by each of your fan’s networks individually as well as your brand and your network.
People trust people more than brands; UGC is content created by people.
Our team of professional social media specialists at FEUR Media House can help you set your UGC goals and share the secrets of the trade to tempt your customers and followers to engage with your social media platforms.
5. Measuring Success with Analytics
You cannot manage what you cannot measure!
Remember how difficult it was to measure your marketing efforts in the past, marketing research firms, focus groups, paper-based surveys, street interviews, etc.
Social media revolutionised the way marketing data is collected. Every single detail you need to know about your customers, consumer behaviours, trends and feedback is digitalised.
There are hundreds of social media tools through which you can receive a comprehensive report that you can use as a trustworthy source for your business.
You get full insight into each social media platform’s performance and learn more about which of your social media posts and content is performing best with which audience.
It also provides you with in-depth recommendations of what you need to do in the future, which is a great asset for your decision-making process about which platform you need to invest in more and those that need to be abandoned.
The power of social media for business in figures
According to sproutsocial, there are seven important figures that proved the importance of social media for business.
1. 55% of consumers learn about new brands on social media.
2. 68% of consumers agree that social media enables them to interact with brands and companies.
3. 43% of consumers increased their social media use to discover new products in the last year.
4. 78% of consumers are willing to buy from a company after having a positive experience with them on social media.
5. 80% of business executives think investing additional resources in social media marketing is essential.
6. 91% of executives will increase social media marketing budgets in the next 3 years.
7. 72% of companies use social media data to make business decisions.
Read the full survey results here.
