There was a time when social media was thought of as a passing fad or something only ‘kids’ used but these days it’s hard to ignore its influence and social media for business is no longer optional. We look at 5 reasons why your business now needs social media.

1. To reach your target audience

With 63% of the UK population using social networking and over two thirds who do, do so at least once a day, whoever your customers are there is a social network to reach and connect with them.

Facebook is by far the most popular social media network. As of September 2016 Facebook reported that 1.79 billion people use the site monthly and it’s continuing to grow, with 500,000 new users added daily – that’s 6 new users added every second. Facebook is also popular with businesses with around 50 million active business pages.

Twitter has 313 million monthly active users and there are 500 million tweets sent every day – that’s around 6,000 tweets every second. Twitter is also popular with businesses with 65.8% of U.S. companies with over 100 employees using Twitter for marketing purposes.

Instagram has 500 million monthly active users and 80% of those are now outside the U.S. Instagram appeals to a younger demographic with 55% of online adults aged 18 to 29 using the platform and 90% of its users under the age of 35. It also has a higher percentage of female users with 31 percent of women regularly using the platform compared to 24 percent of men.

LinkedIn is the most business orientated social media platform with 450 million members. There are also over 3 million businesses who have set up a company page on the platform.

Pinterest now has over 150 million monthly active users and although still more popular among the female population, over 40% of new signups are now men.

2. To gain valuable insights

By having a presence on the social media platforms that your customers use, it will not only allow you to interact and build relationships with them but also gain valuable insights into their lives. By simply listening on social media, you can discover what your customers are talking about, who they are interacting with and even how they feel about your brand, allowing you to make better business and marketing decisions.

Oh, and it’s not just your customers you can learn about, by ‘stalking’ your competitors on social media you can easily find out what they are doing or things such as promotions or offers they are running.

3. To increase traffic to your website and improve search rankings

Another big advantage of using social media for your business is its ability to drive traffic to your company website. If you publish a great blog post one of the best ways to let people know is to share it via your social media channels. By sharing this way and hopefully encouraging engagement from your followers, you are improving its SEO value too. So, if you’re kind enough to share this blog post via your own social media channels it will increase its chances of being ranked higher in Google’s search engine results.

4. Because customers now expect customer service via social media

In the same way customers expected businesses to build websites and respond to emails, they now expect to be able to connect with a brand via social media. A report from Conversocial found that 54% of customers actually prefer customer service via social media and SMS. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have recently rolled out updates that make it easier than ever for customers to connect with you and for your business to quickly and easily respond. Many of these customer interactions will take place on social media in full view of the public, so it’s important you as a business are able to respond quickly and effectively to any questions positive or negative.

5. To take advantage of the highly targeted and affordable advertising opportunities

Running paid promotions and advertising via social media platforms is a relatively inexpensive way to promote your business. It is possible on all the major platforms to use effective targeting to reach your audience. For instance, on Facebook you’re able to narrow down your ad reach by location, age, gender, demographics, interests and behaviours as well as connections. Also on LinkedIn you can add things such as job title and company. In real time, you can then track and measure the performance of your ads allowing you to easily see which are performing better and which are less effective.

There are many reasons why your business needs social media so if you need help getting started or developing a more strategic approach please contact us at ib3.