Social media is a powerful tool for businesses beyond just brand awareness. While it excels in promoting your brand, it can also influence marketing and sales funnels, build brand authority and reputation, inform product development, provide customer service, and more.
This comprehensive guide explores the importance of social media for businesses and outlines strategies to maximize its potential.
Significance of social media for businesses
1. Growth
Understanding the purpose of social media for your business is the first step. Typically, the goals involve growing audiences, driving traffic, and achieving business objectives. Social media strategies often become tactical rather than strategic, leading to disconnected approaches from goals and results. Whether your goal is to generate awareness, foster engagement, or achieve specific conversions, these KPIs should align with your growth objectives.
2. Driving traffic
One primary goal of social media is to drive traffic to your website. While impressions and engagement within the platform are valuable, the ultimate aim is often to get users to click through to your website. Leveraging social media effectively can increase website traffic and engage your audience in ways that provide value and lead them closer to conversion and your overall goals.
3. Customer support & outreach
Social media enables interactions with customers in ways other channels cannot. While email is useful for subscribers, social media allows for fostering community and open communication. Leveraging social media for customer support can enhance community building, improve customer satisfaction, and deepen relationships with your audience.
4. Reputation management
Many social media platforms serve as review and rating sites, especially for B2C businesses. Monitoring these platforms allows you to leverage positive reviews and address negative ones professionally, thus managing your company’s reputation effectively.
5. Public Relations (PR)
Social media is a powerful vehicle for disseminating important company news and messages. Platforms like LinkedIn are ideal for professional communications, while others can spread positive news and gain goodwill. High engagement rates on PR content can increase audience sizes and visibility in feeds, amplifying your PR efforts.
6. Being found
Social media is not just about boosting content and ads but also about being found. Platforms like Facebook act as search engines where users seek specific content and conversations. Ensuring an up-to-date presence and optimizing your profile can enhance your visibility and findability within social platforms and beyond.
7. Local search
Local search algorithms consider social media networks when determining authority status and rankings. A well-optimized social media page benefits local search results, extending the impact beyond the platform itself.
8. SEO
While debated, integrating social media with SEO is widely recommended. Linking your website to social profiles, creating content, and engaging on social platforms can boost your SEO efforts.
9. Funnel development
Social media influences all marketing funnel stages, from awareness to sales. A targeted content strategy and effective funnels and retargeting can help achieve conversion goals.
10. Agile marketing
Agile marketing involves small content investments and quick testing to make adjustments. Social media is ideal for trying out content, judging interest and engagement, and guiding further investments in content.
11. Prospecting
Social media offers a unique reach compared to other digital marketing channels. Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook/Instagram allow for proactive targeting and expanding prospect audiences through organic reach and sponsored content.
12. Thought leadership
Establishing thought leadership is possible through social media. By posting authoritative content and leveraging influencer audiences, you can build trust and authority in your industry.
13. Promoting content
Social media can be used to promote content for various objectives, from general awareness to specific calls to action. Promoting content that aligns with your audience’s needs and your goals can drive deeper engagement and conversions.
14. Content ideas from your audience
User-generated content (UGC) is invaluable for building your editorial calendar. Surveying or focus grouping topics informally through social media can generate ideas and ensure your content meets audience demands.
15. Gaining industry insight
Monitoring competitors and using social listening tools can provide insights into audience shifts and inspire strategy, content, product decisions, and broader marketing intelligence initiatives.
16. Recruitment
Your social media content matters to job seekers. Platforms like LinkedIn are crucial for recruiting, while others like Facebook and Instagram showcase company culture. Marketing your company through social media can attract ideal candidates.
Best practices for social media strategy
1. Set measurable social media goals
Define how you want social media to benefit your business. Establish objectives to track and measure, focusing on strategies that support strategic goals beyond likes and shares.
Common goals include:
- Build brand awareness: Enhance public recognition and perception.
- Gain new customers: Drive traffic to your social media or website.
- Strengthen customer service: Engage with and assist customers.
- Increase engagement: Encourage interactions and referrals.
2. Choose the right social media networks
Avoid spreading resources too thin by focusing on networks that best reach your target customers. Each platform has unique best practices:
- Facebook: Post daily with images and calls-to-action.
- Twitter: Tweet 5-30 times a day, using images and 1-2 hashtags.
- LinkedIn: Post 4-5 times weekly, targeting professionals.
- Google+: Share content daily, leveraging Google’s search indexing.
- Pinterest/Instagram: Post daily photos showcasing products and company culture.
Find out the best times to post on social media for different platforms.
3. Brand your social media profile pages
Maintain consistent branding across all channels to build a strong identity and loyalty. Ensure uniformity in:
- Logo & tagline: Use the same logo and tagline.
- Imagery: Use consistent graphics and photos.
- Company description: Keep a clear, concise, and consistent “about us” section.
- Tone & voice: Communicate in an authentic, consistent manner.
4. Content quality over quantity
Focus on creating valuable, high-quality content. Maintain a mix of:
- Promotional Content
- Thought Leadership
- Follower Engagement
Use an editorial calendar to organize and adjust content based on engagement.
5. Monitor social media analytics
Regularly review social media analytics to support your goals. Use third-party advanced social media analytics tools, or native social media platform insights to track performance and adapt new strategies.
6. Check out competitors
Observe competitors’ social media strategies to identify best practices. Monitor their branding, popularity, posting frequency, engagement, and content types. Engage with industry influencers for insights.
7. Be patient and stick with it
Building a loyal following takes time. Consistency and patience in implementing your social media strategy will lead to success.
Conclusion
Developing and executing a strategic and comprehensive social media plan can greatly enhance your business. By establishing clear objectives, selecting the appropriate platforms, maintaining brand consistency, and utilizing the distinct benefits of social media, you can foster growth, increase traffic, improve customer support, manage your reputation, and achieve much more. Sustained effort and adaptability to changing trends will ensure long-term success on social media for your business.
