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Are you ready to finally connect with your core consumers? If you still haven’t taken advantage of social media for your services and products, then start now; it’s easy to get started, and the benefits you’ll get far outweigh any of the troubles you might come across.

In recent years, social media marketing has become much more popular thanks to how easy it is to connect with a specific demographic with little cost and difficulty compared to the ways of old. Small businesses especially find this form of marketing has a huge impact on sales.

Why Social Media for a Small Business?
As the owner of a small business, you already know that limited resources are a problem with the amount of work you need to do. Using the standard routes for marketing can further hinder that progress as your funds rapidly dwindle from upkeep. Social media, on the other hand, doesn’t really cost much at all and ensures you hit the target demographic, making sales that much more likely.

There is a trade-off, of course; you’ll have to invest your time and efforts in exchange for the dollars you save. You’ll need to be socially and Internet-savvy, and you must be efficient with your resources.

Still, who can argue against the savings? It certainly costs much less to post to Facebook or to fire off a tweet than it does to mail out fliers or running a paid ad in a regional newspaper.

Social Media Impacts Organic Results
It’s no secret that you want to rank better in Google in your niche’s common keywords. When it comes to making a dent in this, you’re often told that compelling and optimized content are key. While this is still true, the main thinking behind this is because other websites can find your content, add a link to it and help contribute to your search ranking.

With social media, you get to broadcast this content to readers you know will be interested in seeing it. These prospects visit your content, read a few other articles and then decide to subscribe for new content. From there, they tell their friends, link to it and keep boosting your rankings as the search engines pay attention to this.

Statistics
The following are statistics proving the benefits of social media for small businesses:

46 percent of online users rely on social media to help make a decision with a purchase (Neilsen)
71 percent of users are more likely to get products from a brand they follow online than not (Digitalsherpa)
63 percent of users prefer businesses with readily available social media information (Digitalsherpa)
15 percent of customers look for local businesses using social media sites (Digitalsherpa)
52 percent of businesses found their customers through Facebook in 2013 (Socialmediatoday)
43 percent of businesses found their customers through LinkedIn during the same year (Socialmediatoday)
36 percent of businesses found their customers through Twitter during the same year (Socialmediatoday)

Monitoring Your Online Presence
Once you’ve established yourself on social media sites, you still need to analyze the results you find. Tracking your data is the best way to know whether what you’re doing is working or whether you need to revisit the approach you take with customers.

In particular, you should monitor growth, sharing and engagement within your audience. Most networks offer tools to check this performance with ease. Review this information every two or three months to make any adjustments or recreate the things that are working.

Based on these benefits and statistics, it’s clear small businesses are finally benefiting from the various platforms available on the Internet. Are you next on the list?

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