Social media is a significant facet of this digital era. Its influence is reflected by the striking metrics like over a billion audiences in popular social media sites, the annual user increment of around 11%, the remarkable engagement rate and the like. With its evolution over the last decade, social media has eventually become a reliable medium of commercial information. 65% of social media users consider information which is shared on social media while making their purchase decision. No wonder, social media has come to be an effective weapon for business professionals, especially savvy marketers.
Some specifics about social media which will encourage you to use social media for your business are sorted out as follows:
Social media offers you low – cost platform for advertising:
Developing a social media strategy is the best way to decrease the marketing expenses in a business. While a 30 seconds TV ad pricing $350000 reaches a national audience a Facebook ad at a lesser cost reaches the global audience. So, social media gives you a better harvest for your marketing investments.
Social media offers you a wide audience reach:
If your aim is a wide reach then social media is your best bet. Facebook has over 1 billion active users across different demographics, geography and cultural parameters. Twitter which is logged in by over 100 million users daily is mostly used by the age ran. The twitter users aging above 60 are also increasing.
Social media enables your faster reach to audience:
There is hardly anyone who does not have a social media account. More than 60% of the social media account holders use their social media accounts daily. This justifies the fact and assures you that social media has a faster and ascertained reach to your target audience.
Social media offers you an intense user engagement:
User generated content in social media earns sincere attention of users. Apart from this, most of the content comes off in appealing forms like engaging games, queries, video ads and the like.
Social media hikes brand loyalty of your fans:
Most of the content in social media is user generated and it flows in from reliable sources. Moreover social media exposes your brand to a wide audience and it enables you to interact with the audience. It’s a three tier effect: it introduces your brand to your young prospective fans, invokes curiosity about your brand and emboldens the faith of your already existing fans. All these help you to earn brand loyalty from your fans.
Social media offers you the scope of better customer service:
Social media helps you in understanding the sentiment of your audience for your brand. By following the social buzz and analysing social sentiment of your target audience you understand the exact needs of your customers and follow them up with the required service.
While the above stated advantages of social media gives you good returns, using social media for your brand is not free from risks. One of the risks arises from the fast reach of social media. So, if it’s a positive buzz your brand may become the king of the market while if it’s a negative buzz, you brand may get affected. So, using social media requires your vigilance all the time. You have to keep an eye on the reactions of your audiences to your marketing activities and keep the buzz about your brand under control. Giving prompt responses to your audience queries, regulating negative posts with an appeasing reply and pivoting audience attention to positive posts help you to regulate the reactions of your audience.
If you are infusing social media in your business strategies you must not miss out on these tips:
Learn about the behaviour of your audience:
Learning audience behaviour is a mixture of quantitative and qualitative process. It requires your intent observation, social sentiment analysis, search analysis etc. Learning about audience behaviour will help you to tune in your brand with your target audience.
Do not beat the drum about your brand:
Over promoting your brand will hamper your brand reputation. So, social media strategies must be objectified to win the heart of your audience rather than promoting your business. It should be customer oriented.
Respond to messages and queries on time:
Apt response to messages and queries from your audience helps you to earn new fans and maintain the relationship with already existing fans.
Do not abuse the use of hash tags:
The hash tags you use must be relevant to your business and must be popular at the time you make your post.
Post at optimal frequencies:
Posting at optimal frequencies increases the visibility of your brand in a social site. So, learn about the optimal frequency of posting in a particular site with real time posting as well as secondary research and post accordingly.
Use the right parameters to measure the success of your brand:
The ROI parameters tell you how effective have been your social media strategies and how you should proceed in the future. Choose the right parameters to evaluate your social media activities and earn rich returns.
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