With over 30 million small businesses in the United States, it’s easy to fall victim to competition if you don’t stay up-to-date with contemporary technology. In 2022, it’s not just enough to have a presence online — you have to get used to using social media.
However social media is a whole world in-of-itself. If you want to succeed in this world, you’re going to have to truly put in the effort, and you might just not want to if you don’t understand the benefits of social media for businesses.
This article will walk you through some of the business advantages of using social media, and try to convince you that it’s not just some frivolous entertainment.
Social Media Improves Customer Service
Most customers stay loyal to businesses they trust. It’s no secret that most business comes from the same people doing business over and over again. Bringing in new customers is nice, but it won’t mean anything if those people never come back again — there are only a certain amount of people in the market for your products; you can’t get all of them, so you might as well give a few people many reasons to come back.
One of the best ways to get people coming back to your business over and over again is great customer service. If people enjoy spending time with your employees and in your business, they’re going to enjoy coming back to you.
Social media allows you to provide top-of-the-line customer service in ways never possible before. If you create a regular social media presence for yourself, people will begin asking you questions about your products and services. If you answer quickly and efficiently, you can show your customers your wonderful customer service before they even do business with you.
Furthermore, if you’re on a social media site like Facebook or Twitter, all of said followers friends will see the interaction between you two automatically. This is a wonderful way to advertise for free.
You Can Funnel People To Your Site
At the end of the day, people aren’t going to wind up on your site accidentally. Sure, you can use SEO to bump your site up to the top of relevant search engine results, but at the end of the day, you’re only getting people who are actively looking for your product.
People scroll through social media platforms, generally, with no specific purpose. They’ll scroll any and everywhere, simply to pass the time. If your social media presence if bold and exciting enough, it can catch these people and convince them they need your product; from there, they can share it with their friends.
Make sure you keep a link to your website on your social media page. All it takes is for a person who enjoys a post of yours to click on your page, enjoy what they see there, and take a try on your website.
This is something unique and beautiful about the internet age. If you meet someone out in public and tell them about your business, you’re going to have to trust that they’ll remember and head over to check it out in person.
However, in the internet age, these people can go straight from your social media post to the website.
Social Media Improves Branding Capabilities
As previously stated, using social media is great for showing your customers what you’re all about. If, on top of your great social media presence, posts, and responses, you can also fill your site with relevant and dynamic branding, people will learn to recognize your product more clearly.
You can theme all of your main posts around the colors and concepts that fuel your brand. You can also create a style of video — humorous or otherwise — that fits with your brand image.
If you want to come across as compassionate and friendly, you can feature a different one of your employees every week. If you want to seem quirky and unhinged, you can allow one of your employees to “take over” your Instagram account for a day.
To learn more, check out this great app we found, which centers on quality social media campaign creation.
You Can Easily Conduct Market Research
People on the internet are going to tell you what they think about your business — whether you like it or not. You can use this as a free and easy form of market research.
Take consideration of people’s comments on your posts — whether they’re positive or negative. If the comment isn’t completely destructive or irrelevant, try to respond to it and understand exactly what your customer liked or disliked. And then… do more of that thing!
Tons of small businesses spend more money than they can afford on conducting market research. It’s helpful, but at the end of the day, you can get a lot of mileage for free, if you spend some time on social media.
After you create a great social media campaign, we recommend hiring someone — probably from Gen Z, they understand it the best — to monitor your social media comments, DMs, and inquiries, and translate them to what a customer wants.
Understand the Benefits of Social Media For Businesses
As you can see, social media isn’t just for fun: there are many benefits of social media for businesses.
If you use it right, social media can improve your customer service, funnel people over to your site, improve branding capabilities, and help you conduct market research.
For more articles like this, check out our “business” section.
Lisa Eclesworth is a notable and influential lifestyle writer. She is a mom of two and a successful homemaker. She loves to cook and create beautiful projects with her family. She writes informative and fun articles that her readers love and enjoy.
