What impact has social media had on businesses? Think about it like this: millions of people use social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and LinkedIn every day. Smartphones give people 24/7 access to social media. All businesses have customers that use social media, including multi-family residential groups and healthcare organizations.
Most of these people are using social media to engage with brands just like yours.
In fact, HootSuite found that 52% of online brand discovery happens in public social feeds.
The impact of social media on businesses is almost immeasurable. Social media is a fast, inexpensive way for you to reach your potential customers. Having the right social media strategies can help you grow your business and your online reputation.
Humanize Your Brand
The biggest benefit of using social media is that it humanizes your brand. It shows people what you do is more than a company logo. Using social media platforms to create real human connections
Social media gives you the ability to showcase your product or services improving the lives of your current customers. It can also encourage others to improve their lives in the same way. That can have a huge impact on your business.
Not sure where to start?
Start by posting a video on your social accounts of current customers talking about how you helped them solve a problem. Position your customers as the heroes of their stories and your brand as the guide. By showing others how your company impacted someone else, you can be sure you will attract more business.
The goal is to establish yourself as a subject matter expert in your field.
It’s also important to think about user intent. Social media users are looking for engaging content that doesn’t go too deeply into detail. But the content does need to provide emotional value.
This is a different mindset from that of people searching for details about a product or service. Keep user intent in mind before posting.
Social publishing tools can help you post your new content to most relevant social platforms. These tools, like Binary Fountain’s Social Publishing solution, allow you to create a single post and schedule it for distribution across multiple social media sites. Restrictions can be set in place to ensure all posts are reviewed, approved and scheduled by a supervisor before going public.
These additional controls within social media management tools are especially important for enterprise brands. They simplify the management of multiple locations and their local public outreach.
The Impact of Building a Social Community
Social media platforms give your business the power to reach potential customers every time they check their profile. This gives you almost limitless opportunities to connect with fans. people spend an average of six years and eight months using social media over their lifetime. By comparison, the average time a person spends eating and drinking is three years, seven months.
We know users are plugged into what happens on social media. But that doesn’t mean they want or are excited to see your content. Users are typically interested in what their friends and family are doing. That’s where organic customer referrals can help.
Customers are using social media for digital word-of-mouth referrals when choosing businesses. Increasing the number of people who interact with your product or service increases the likelihood of additional views. Thus, you build a connection you wouldn’t have had before.
Additionally, there are probably people in private groups and messages asking for recommendations for the products or services you offer. Having an attractive profile on social media and a well laid out website will help you put your best foot forward.
Post engaging content on a regular schedule to develop a following. They will help you grow your brand and a community to support it.
Paid Advertisement: Boost Your Social Media Impact
Over 98% of Facebook’s first-quarter 2020 revenue came from advertising. Businesses are paying for advertisement space on social media because they’re seeing results. This is especially true for businesses interested in boosting brand awareness.
It can be hard selling executives on paid advertising if they are used to thinking of social media as “free.” Facebook allows you to post content to your existing audience for free. However, the percentage of audience members that will see your post in their feeds has been steadily declining.
Part of the reason for this decline is an increase in pages producing content for a finite audience. Facebook has also noticed that overexposure to advertising reduces user engagement and has adjusted its algorithm accordingly.
Paid placement greatly expands your reach by moving your posts above the fray and featuring them in prominent placements. And the cost to do so is surprisingly low. Some businesses have been able to reach as many as 200 visitors for $5 per day.
Even at such a low price, Facebook allows users access to exceptional targeting. Paying for social advertisements also allows you to be more focused on your marketing efforts. It allows you to reach new audiences by finding people with similar interests to your current customers. You can then place your business in front of them.
Using retargeting and custom lists, you are able to continue the conversation with customers based on their individual behavior. You’re able to show them the right product or service at the right time.
Businesses have used these features to push stalled leads down sales funnels, as well as find new qualified leads.
Monitor What Your Current Customers Are Saying
Social media isn’t always what you say to your audience, but what your audience says about you. Nothing can be more valuable to your business than real-time feedback from customers who are already invested in your business. You can discover this feedback through tools like Binary Fountain’s Social Listening solution.
Social listening refers to a brand’s ability to monitor and manage their online social presence using keyword tracking. It allows you to set and track relevant keywords across a wide range of different sites and platforms. It allows brands to monitor their mentions on both the macro and micro levels.
Social listening allows brands to track their mentions from Facebook reviews to Twitter complaints, comments on Reddit, and beyond.
Having all this knowledge on a single dashboard allows you to organize a social media management plan. It’s also invaluable for responding to all feedback quickly and effectively.
Comments, messages and engagement rates all help inform how a product, business, or idea is being received by the audience. The best social listening algorithms allow for advanced keyword-based targeting for more effective feedback analysis.
For example, if you want to focus on a specific region, you can input regional tags. If a customer mentions it alongside your company name you will receive a notification.
You can take advantage of segmented keyword tracking to focus your social listening on a specific aspect of your brand. This capability breaks target online mentions into streams or topics for deep analytics and reporting purposes.
Proper keyword configuration helps to magnify specific parts of your business and run a sentiment analysis to measure patient satisfaction.
Engage Your Customers with Review Responses
Your customers are already talking about you online. By engaging your audience when they have concerns or complaints, you are showing others your willingness to please customers. Engagement goes a long way to establishing a positive online reputation.
Similarly, if someone is saying good things about your business, you can reaffirm that sentiment by thanking the person. This highlights how much you appreciate your customers.
Social media is a chance for you to highlight positive customer experiences and quickly respond to negative feedback.
Remember, if someone says something negative about your business, respond politely, and professionally. Even if the customer reacts obstinately, your response will signal your concern for positive customer experiences to other users.
Social publishing is not only a powerful tool for brand promotion but also useful for replying to positive and negative reviews and comments.
Your social publishing dashboard will notify you when a user has responded to one of your posts across platforms. You can then respond in several ways, either within the dashboard or via the social media platform itself.
Manage Your Social Media Presence in One Place
Do you need help managing your social media presence? Binary Fountain’s social media management tools can help. Our suite combines publishing and listening technologies to help you manage, schedule and publish posts across multiple social media channels.
The software also allows you to monitor social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter on one platform. Tracking social media mentions gives you a real-time view into what customers are saying about your business. Spend more time acting on insights and improving your business, and spend less time collecting data.
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