What is the number one reason a business uses social media?

September 22, 2022

You can ask any marketer if your business should be present on social media and their answer will be a resounding YES! So you took their advice - you made a business account on every social media platform out there and you made a few posts. Now what? Why should you keep up with your business social media other than to say that you have one?

Social media is a key part of a successful Inbound Marketing strategy. Having accounts for your business provides you with a great number of benefits besides just being caught up with today’s society.

However, to truly reap the benefits from social media, you need to not only be present, but also active on these accounts. By using social media to its full potential, you will be able to see the following benefits to your business:

1. Brand Awareness and Loyalty

By having actively working social media accounts, you will be able to raise your brand awareness across your industry. According to Hubspot, 92% of marketers said that their social media presence has generated more exposure for their business.

For example, if you have an active presence on social accounts, you allow yourself to be tagged in recommendations, which means you could reach new leads who didn’t know about your business or product.

You can also stay in touch with your existing customer base and increase their brand loyalty. Marketers are using these tools to provide an authentic and personal voice for their brand and 69% of them saw increased brand loyalty because of this, according to Hubspot.

2. Website Traffic

One of the main goals of marketing is always to increase traffic to your website in the hopes of gaining a new customer or completing a sale. Social media is no different and one of the main benefits of being actively present on these platforms in increased traffic to your website.

A Hubspot study showed that 80% of marketers saw increased web traffic from their social media efforts.

One reason for this is because social media provides a group of people who aren’t necessarily searching for your product or brand with access to your information.

3. SEO Value

Social media has a larger role in your SEO ranking than you may think. Page visits still hold the most importance when it comes to ranking and Google now takes into account the different sources where your traffic originates.

By producing social media content that drives viewers back to your site, you are working towards increasing your SEO ranking.

Another benefit is if you publish a valuable blog article or other content link on your social accounts, it could see a large amount of shares.

The more your links are shared on social media platforms, the more valuable and authoritative your website links will appear to Google, which will also boost your SEO ranking.

4. Customer Service and Experience

Customer service and experience plays a large role in marketing today. It is just as important to keep an existing customer as it is to gain a new one and one of the best ways to keep your customers is to provide them with an excellent customer experience.

If you are active and present on the social accounts where your customers are talking about you, you have a unique opportunity to respond to them just as publicly as they responded to you.

Positive or negative, you have the opportunity to create a personal experience for your customers and meet them where they are present.

5. Social Proof and Credibility

It’s a known fact that people want to do what they see other people doing. It’s the reason for trends, popular products, popular people, and more.

The more active you are on social media, the more followers you will gain (as long as you are going about it properly). The more followers you have, the more you will be viewed as a credible source when people are searching for your product within your industry.

If potential customers see other people using your product or service, they will be more inclined to do the same.

6. Highly Targeted Advertising

Another benefit of using social media platforms is the opportunity for highly targeted advertising. Social media, and Facebook in particular, allows you to target your ads specifically to groups of interest based on age, location, interests, etc. It also allows you to retarget ads to people who have seen certain ads or visited specific pages on your website.

This highly targeted advertising not only will benefit you by showing your ads to the people who would be most interested in them, but it also will save you money on your ad costs.

In fact, according to Hubspot, almost half of marketers who invested time into Facebook ads saw reduced marketing costs.

7. Increased Sales Generation

A final way that social media presence will benefit your business is through increased sales and conversions. Studies show that 66% of marketers saw an increase in lead generation, 74% gained new business, and over 50% said that sales improved.

If you are producing valuable content, targeting the correct audience through buyer personas, and driving visitors back to your website, the time spent on social media should provide you with increased sales overall.

Final Thoughts:

Social media, like any other marketing tool, requires time and effort. We realize that not everyone has the time and resources to be spending hours per day on multiple social media accounts.

If you can’t post multiple times a day from every single platform out there, that’s ok. Like any other marketing tool, research should be performed to find out where your target audience spends the majority of their time. Once you learn that, then you can focus your efforts on those platforms, while still maintaining lower levels of activity across the social media board.

To find out where your target audience is spending their time, you need to create a buyer persona. Download our free Buyer Persona template here to get started!

What are the 5 main reasons businesses use social media?

What are the three reasons why a business should use social media?

What are 2 reasons why businesses should use social media marketing?

What is the main purpose of using social media?