Social Media in Business

Social media has become one of the most prominent methods of communication in today’s world. What used to be something dismissed as a passing fad or a platform to socialize with friends can now be used to benefit your business.

Here are 5 ways that businesses can use social media to push their business efforts forward.

1.     Growing brand recognition – Being on social media allows customers an easy way to find and interact with your business.  By doing so you are connecting with customers on a bit of a personal level.  This can lead to an increased customer base, as well as increased brand loyalty, because they know you’re at their fingertips at all times.

2.     Distributing Content – Commercials and billboards used to be the only effective ways to promote new products, deals, or general business for a company. Now, with Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets, a business can reach thousands of people simply by sharing a post.  Have a new product you want to promote? Post on twitter.  Companies can not only post onto their own social media account, but they can partner with the platform itself to promote their post on timelines of people that may not follow them, similar to old pop-up adds but less invasive.

3.     Customer Interaction – Having a social connection with customers leads not only you reaching them easier to promote your business, but allows you to understand what the customer wants and receive feedback.  What do customers like about your business/products/services? What do they dislike? Gleaning through customer tweets and posts aimed at your business can help you develop an idea of how the public, as a whole, evaluates your company.  You can introduce polls or simply ask your customer base questions on products, your service, or how you can improve your company to meet their needs.

4.    Follow your competitors – If you’re looking into building a strong presence on social media, you can bet that your competitors are as well.  Thankfully you can follow their posts and see what they are doing and make tactical business decisions in order to stay on top.  There are even social media monitoring programs that can help you gain important data concerning your competitors, as well track key words and products within your industry.

5.    Meet customer expectations – At this point, it’s essentially an expectation to be on social media.  If a customer has an experience with a business and wants to provide feedback, many are opting to go the social media route instead of a typical customer review.  Many businesses have paid staff that are constantly overseeing these accounts to actually provide prompt responses to customers.  These types of interactions are extremely appreciated, and can go a long way in gaining customer retention. 

If you’re on the fence about getting your business into the social media scene, it’s time to make the push forward.  When done right, social media can only bolster your efforts to get your business where you want it to be. It may even be the difference between a customer choosing your business over another, or vice versa.

Get out there and start posting!