Advantages Of Social Media Marketing For Business

Do you want to get more customers, drive more traffic to your website, build brand awareness and increase sales? Then Social Media Marketing is the right choice for you. Social Media Marketing can help you attract new customers, turn them into repeat buyers and increase the bottom line of your business.

In this guide, we review the aspects of Advantages Of Social Media Marketing For Business, how businesses use social media for marketing, social media marketing strategy, and why social media is best for marketing.

Advantages Of Social Media Marketing For Business

Social media marketing is one of the best and most cost-effective ways to market your business. SMM can help you attract customers, drive traffic to your website, increase brand awareness, build loyalty and convert leads into sales.

Can Boost Sales.

It is a known fact that social media marketing can boost your sales. The more followers you have, the more people will see your product or service and hence, they will be interested in buying it. You need to make sure that your content is relevant and interesting so that people will want to follow your page and keep coming back for more.

The power of social media marketing lies within its ability to reach out to millions of potential customers at one time and this makes it an efficient tool for brand promotion as well as customer acquisition. Social networking sites are basically designed for interaction between users which helps them get connected with each other and share information about products, services or events etc., which makes them an excellent medium for business promotion too!

Increases Brand Awareness.

Brand awareness is the first step to building a successful brand. It’s the process of making your brand known to your target audience, which includes potential customers and business partners. Brand awareness is one of the key steps in the marketing mix — not only does it help you attract new customers, but it also helps increase customer loyalty and repeat purchases from existing ones.

To achieve this goal, you can use many different marketing channels including social media marketing, email marketing and online ads (such as Google AdWords).

Improves Brand Loyalty.

Social media marketing can also improve brand loyalty. Loyalty programs are a great way to reward customers who continue to support your business, and they bring in more revenue than other types of marketing. In addition to rewarding loyal customers, social media allows you to engage with them and have conversations about your brand. This can lead to better customer service and make your customers feel like their opinions matter. Social media is a great way to communicate with potential and existing customers because it allows for instant contact and real-time responses from businesses or brands (in other words: no waiting for an email response!). All in all, social media can be used as an effective tool for improving customer engagement which will ultimately lead towards increased sales!

Helps In Increasing Traffic.

Social media is a great way to increase traffic and build links, citations and brand awareness. You can grow your audience quickly by utilizing social media as it offers you an opportunity to reach out directly to them through content sharing, commenting on other posts and interacting with people who share similar interests. If you want to boost traffic on your website then social media marketing is the right choice for you as it allows you access thousands of potential customers who might not have known about your business otherwise.

In addition, social media helps in promoting affiliate programs or products which can be sold online at a reasonable price without any hassle from buyers in order for them to benefit from getting discounts or special offers on their purchases

Provides A Way To Connect With Niche Audiences.

Social media is a great way to connect with niche audiences. Niche audiences are interested in specific topics and will likely be willing to engage with you on these subjects. Social media can be used as a platform to share content that is relevant to these niche audiences, which will help build your brand and show potential customers that you’re an authority in the industry.

Helps To Publish Real-Time Content.

Social media marketing can help you publish real-time content. This is important, as it helps build trust and credibility for your brand. Real-time content is also very useful for marketing, as it helps you reach out to your audience in a more personal way.

Cost-Effective And Flexible Marketing Channel.

The second advantage of social media marketing for business is that it’s cost-effective and flexible. It can be used for free and can be used for a long time. You don’t have to pay any money to get started with social media marketing, which makes it an excellent option if you’re on a tight budget.

Additionally, the flexibility of social media means that you won’t have to spend a lot of money in order to get results from your efforts; instead, you can spend time developing your strategies instead of spending thousands at once. And as long as your strategy is working well, there’s no reason why you should stop using it or change anything about it—you’ll still be able to see positive results!

Drive More Inbound Traffic.

You can use social media to drive more traffic to your website.

Social media sites are the most popular search engine, and people use it to find information about products and services. You can also use social media to drive traffic to your social media accounts by linking them on your website, blog and other web pages.

Helps In Conversion Rate Optimization.

Social media marketing helps you to improve the conversion rate of your website. It helps you to improve the click-through rate of your website.

This is done by providing an easy way for people to share content on different social platforms, which ultimately increases visibility and engagement in terms of likes and comments, which can be considered as an indicator of quality content.

Improve Customer Satisfaction & Loyalty Programs.

Social media marketing is a great way to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Social media allows your business to respond quickly, which makes customers feel valued. It also gives you the opportunity to build relationships with your customers by offering them personalized attention and providing them with information they need.

Strengthen Your Company’s Image & Reputation.

Social media marketing is a powerful tool to build your company’s image and reputation. It is a great way to connect with your customers and build trust with them. Social media can help you create a positive image for your brand, increase revenue, improve customer service, and more.

If you want to grow your business or make improvements in any area of it then social media marketing is definitely worth considering!

So many social media platforms are emerging day by day, so the scope of SMM is going to grow more in the coming years and you can use it as a medium to connect with customers and generate leads for your business.

Social media marketing is a great way to connect with your customers and get them interested in your business. With social media, you can be more interactive with your audience and make the most out of their feedback and suggestions.

It’s also a good channel for generating leads for your business. You can use social media channels like Facebook or Twitter as a medium to promote offers or discounts that are valid only during short periods of time so that it would be easy for people who want to avail them at discounted prices.

how businesses use social media for marketing

Your time is valuable, but so is social media. Here’s what small business owners need to know to make the most of each platform.

Social media marketing for small business is all about being strategic. While enterprise companies have the luxury of dedicated resources and time, small businesses need to be more agile, nimble, and creative.

You can’t just throw money at a problem and hope for the best. You need to be smart about how you’re using social media to reach your target audience.

Here are all the social media marketing tips you need to market your small business in 2023.

Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your own strategy. Also use it to track results and present the plan to your boss, teammates, and clients.

If you own a business, you’ve likely spent time researching social media marketing for small business. And for good reason.

There are now 4.2 billion active social media users. That’s almost twice as many as there were just five years ago, in 2017. Those users spend an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes on social channels every single day.

What’s more, social media isn’t just for big businesses anymore. In fact, 71% of small-to-mid-sized businesses use social media to market themselves, and 52% post once a day.

If you want to compete, you need to get online. Here are five essential reasons for using social media for business.

Reach more potential customers

Every business owner knows how difficult it can be to attract new customers. You can spend hours crafting the perfect product and designing an eye-catching website, but if no one knows you exist, it’s all for nothing.

Social media has leveled the playing field, giving small businesses a way to compete with larger companies for attention. By using social media platforms to create content that is interesting and engaging, you can reach a wider audience and encourage them to purchase from your brand.

Increase your brand awareness

A well-executed social media marketing strategy will lead to increased visibility for your business. When you create interesting, relevant content, people will share it with their followers, which will increase your reach and exposure. The more your brand is shown online, the more chances you have of people becoming familiar with it and eventually making a purchase.

Understand your customers better

How much do you really know about your customers? While you may have some information about their demographics, social media can help you to learn more granular information about their interests, needs, behaviours, and desires. This valuable customer data can be used to improve your social media marketing strategy and ensure that you’re creating content that appeals to your target market.

We’ve compiled demographic information for all of the major social networks. Use it to help gauge where your audience spends their time online. But remember that these demographics are just an overview.

Understand your competitors better

Your competitors are online. Period. And chances are, they’ve already put some thought into their social media presence. By taking a look at what they’re doing, you can not only get some ideas for your own strategy, but you can learn what’s working well for them and what isn’t. This competitor data is an essential part of creating a successful social media marketing strategy.

Conducting a competitive analysis can help you learn what’s working and what’s not for other businesses like yours. Don’t be afraid to look outside of your main competitors, and draw inspiration from the success of businesses in all industries.

Build long-term relationships with your customers

Social media isn’t just about posting pretty pictures and witty captions. It’s also about building relationships with your customers. These are the people who will buy your products and services and tell their friends about you, so it’s important to nurture these connections.

Showing that you care about your customers and their experience with your business will go a long way in securing these relationships long-term. And, as fans share and like your content, you rise in the social algorithms and gain new, free, exposure.

Keep in mind, the average internet user has 8.4 social media accounts, so you can connect with them on different platforms for different purposes. For example, you could use Facebook to build your audience and generate leads, and Twitter for customer service.

Let’s explore the benefits of each platform for small businesses below.

Now that you know how to use social media for small business, it’s time to get online.

As you begin researching the best platforms and tools to build your social media strategy, don’t make assumptions about where your audience spends their time.

Your instinct might tell you that if you’re targeting Gen Z, you should skip Facebook and focus on Instagram and TikTok. But the data shows that nearly a quarter of Facebook users are aged 18 to 24.

If you’re selling to baby boomers, social might not seem like a top priority. But it should be. Facebook and Pinterest are the top social networks for boomers. Adults over age 65 are Facebook’s fastest-growing audience segment.

Choosing your platforms doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach. You can use different social channels to reach different audiences or to meet various business goals.

Here are the best social media platforms for small businesses.

Facebook

No matter how you feel about this social media giant, Facebook continues to be the most used social media platform globally. It boasts over 2.9 billion monthly active users and more than 200 million businesses.

Facebook is a great platform for small businesses because:

If you’re thinking about using Facebook for your small business, ask these questions first:

Instagram

While Facebook acts as a generalist platform, Instagram is where you can get specific about your niche. If you’re in the fashion, food, or film industries, for example, odds are most of your target audience is on Instagram.

It’s also worth noting that the platform skews younger—the vast majority of users are between 18 and 34. So, if your target audience is baby boomers, you may want to focus your energy elsewhere.

Instagram is a great platform for small businesses because:

If you’re thinking about using Instagram for your small business, ask these questions first:

Twitter

Another platform with generalist appeal is Twitter. Twitter is the 9th most visited website globally and has over 200 million daily active users. Twitter users are also highly engaged shoppers, with 16% of internet users aged 16-64 report using Twitter for brand research and 54% reporting they are likely to purchase new products. For advertisers, Twitter’s CPM is the lowest out of all the major platforms.

Twitter is a great platform for small businesses because it’s:

If you’re thinking about using Twitter for your small business, ask these questions first:

TikTok

Maybe you think TikTok marketing is not the right fit for your brand. But even well-established brands with an audience well outside Gen Z are experimenting with this platform.

The Lower 48 states are seeing the coldest temps of the season so far due to a blast of Arctic air ❄️ #winteriscoming #winter #snow #coldoutside

TikTok is a great platform for small businesses because:

If you’re thinking about using TikTok for your small business, ask these questions first:

Pinterest

In recent years, Pinterest has grown from a creative catalogue platform to one of the most powerful visual search engines on the internet today. Not only do Pinterest users love to find and save new ideas, but they’re also increasingly using the platform to make purchasing decisions.

Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your own strategy. Also use it to track results and present the plan to your boss, teammates, and clients.

Pinterest is a great platform for small businesses because:

If you’re thinking about using Pinterest for your small business, ask these questions first:

YouTube

YouTube is the world’s most popular video-sharing social network that boasts a potential ad reach of 2.56 billion. Not only does YouTube offer a huge audience, but it’s also an effective platform for promoting products and services.

YouTube is a great platform for small businesses because:

If you’re thinking about using YouTube for your small business, ask these questions first:

Create. Schedule. Publish. Engage. Measure. Win.

Once you’ve found the right platforms for your social media marketing, it’s time to start posting. Here are a few social media tips for business to get you started.

1. Plan your content in advance

The number one mistake small businesses make on social media is posting content on the fly. While it may seem easier to spend a little bit of time every day coming up with something to post, this can actually be more time-consuming (and stressful) in the long run.

Creating a social media content calendar can help you plan your content in advance and avoid last-minute scrambling. Plus, it’s easier to come up with a mix of content (e.g., blog posts, images, infographics, etc.) when you have some time to think about it.

When building out your content calendar, make sure to include:

If you’re not sure where to start, check out our free content calendar templates to get started. Or, check out this handy video for a visual walkthrough.

2. Schedule your posts

Once you have that calendar in place, you can create your social posts in advance and use scheduling tools like Hootsuite to post them automatically at the right time.

Scheduling your posts in advance allows you to dedicate one block of time per day or even per week to creating your social content. It’s much more effective than letting social posting take you away from other business tasks throughout the day.

Automation tools like chatbots and AI content creation tools can also help you cut down on the number of hours you spend working on social media marketing.

3. Commit to community management

Sure, posting creative content is important. But if you want to really see results from social media marketing for small business, you need to commit to community management.

Community management is the process of building a community with your customers through the interactions you have online. This can include responding to comments, answering questions, and interacting with customers on social media.

Think of it as an extension of your customer service. You should be interacting with your audience as much as they are interacting with you. This way, you can create a network of customers who feel connected to your brand and are more likely to become loyal, repeat customers.

Community management is also an important part of ranking in social media algorithms. Platforms reward users who are active and engaged, so the more you interact with your audience, the more likely you are to show up in their feeds.

Use Hootsuite Streams to like, comment, reply, and engage with your target audience. You can also use Hootsuite Inbox to keep track of all the conversations you need to be a part of, without missing anything important.

social media marketing strategy

Creating your social media marketing strategy doesn’t need to be painful. Create an effective plan for your business in 9 simple steps.

A social media marketing strategy is a summary of everything you plan to do and hope to achieve on social media. It guides your actions and lets you know whether you’re succeeding or failing.

The more specific your plan is, the more effective it will be. Keep it concise. Don’t make it so lofty and broad that it’s unattainable or impossible to measure.

In this post, we’ll walk you through a nine-step plan to create a winning social media strategy of your own. We’ve even got expert insights from Amanda Wood, Hootsuite’s Senior Manager of Social Marketing.

Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your own strategy. Also use it to track results and present the plan to your boss, teammates, and clients.

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is the practice of using social media channels to sell or promote a brand, product or service.

Social media marketing helps businesses:

What is a social media marketing strategy?

A social media strategy is a document outlining your social media goals, the tactics you will use to achieve them and the metrics you will track to measure your progress.

Your social media marketing strategy should also list all of your existing and planned social media accounts along with goals specific to each platform you’re active on. These goals should align with your business’s larger digital marketing strategy.

Finally, a good social media plan should define the roles and responsibilities within your team and outline your reporting cadence.

Creating your own social media marketing strategy (video guide)

No time to read the whole article? Let Amanda, Hootsuite’s own Senior Manager of Social Media Marketing, guide you through our free social media marketing strategy template in less than 10 minutes:

How to create a social media marketing strategy in 9 steps

Step 1. Choose goals that align to business objectives

Set S.M.A.R.T. goals

The first step to creating a winning social media strategy is to establish clear objectives and goals. Without goals, you have no way to measure success and return on investment (ROI).

Each of your social media marketing goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.

Psst: If you need examples of smart social media goals, we’ve got you covered.

Track meaningful metrics

Vanity metrics like number of followers and likes are easy to track, but it’s hard to prove their real value. Instead, focus on things like engagement, click-through, and conversion rates.

For inspiration, take a look at these 19 essential social media metrics.

You may want to track different goals for different social media networks, or even different uses for each network.

For example, if you use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your website, you would measure click-throughs. If Instagram is for brand awareness, you might track the number of Instagram Story views. And if you advertise on Facebook, cost-per-click (CPC) is a common success metric.

Social media goals should align with your overall marketing objectives. This makes it easier to show the value of your work and secure buy-in from your boss.

Start developing a successful social media marketing plan by writing down at least three goals for social media.

“It’s easy to get overwhelmed by deciding what to post and which metrics to track, but you need to focus on what you want to get out of social media to begin with,” says Amanda Wood, Hootsuite’s Senior Manager of Social Marketing. “Don’t just start posting and tracking everything: match your goals to your business, and your metrics to your goals.”

Create. Schedule. Publish. Engage. Measure. Win.

Step 2. Learn everything you can about your audience

Get to know your fans, followers, and customers as real people with real wants and needs, and you will know how to target and engage them on social media.

When it comes to your ideal customer, you should know things like:

Social media analytics can also provide a ton of valuable information about who your followers are, where they live, and how they interact with your brand on social media. These insights allow you to refine your strategy and better target your audience.

Jugnoo, an Uber-like service for auto-rickshaws in India, used Facebook Analytics to learn that 90% of their users who referred other customers were between 18- and 34-years-old, and 65% of that group was using Android. They used that information to target their ads, resulting in a 40% lower cost per referral.

Step 3. Get to know your competition

Odds are your competitors are already using social media, and that means you can learn from what they’re doing.

Conduct a competitive analysis

A competitive analysis allows you to understand who the competition is and what they’re doing well (and not so well). You’ll get a good sense of what’s expected in your industry, which will help you set social media targets of your own.

It will also help you spot opportunities.

Maybe one of your competitors is dominant on Facebook, for example, but has put little effort into Twitter or Instagram. You might want to focus on the social media platforms where your audience is underserved, rather than trying to win fans away from a dominant player.

Use social media listening

Do searches of the competition’s company name, account handles, and other relevant keywords on social media. Find out what they’re sharing and what other people are saying about them. If they’re using influencer marketing, how much engagement do those campaigns earn them?

Pro tip: Use Hootsuite Streams to monitor relevant keywords, hashtags and accounts in real-time.

As you track, you may notice shifts in how your competitors and industry leaders are using social media. You may come across new, exciting trends. You might even spot specific social content or a campaign that really hits the mark—or totally bombs.

Use this kind of intel to optimize and inform your own social media marketing strategy.

Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your own strategy. Also use it to track results and present the plan to your boss, teammates, and clients.

Just don’t go overboard on the spy tactics, Amanda advises. “Make sure you aren’t ALWAYS comparing yourself to the competition — it can be a distraction. I’d say checking in on a monthly basis is healthy. Otherwise, focus on your own strategy and results.”

If you’re already using social media, take stock of your efforts so far. Ask yourself the following questions:

Once you collect that information, you’ll be ready to start thinking about ways to improve.

We’ve created an easy-to-follow social media audit guide and template to walk you through each step of this process.

Your audit should give you a clear picture of what purpose each of your social accounts serves. If the purpose of an account isn’t clear, think about whether it’s worth keeping.

To help you decide, ask yourself the following questions:

Asking these tough questions will keep your social media strategy focused.

Look for impostor accounts

During the audit, you may discover fake accounts using your business name or the names of your products.

These imposters can be harmful to your brand—never mind that they’re capturing followers that should be yours.

You may want to get your accounts verified too to ensure your fans know they are dealing with the real you.

Here’s how to get verified on:

Step 5. Set up accounts and improve profiles

Decide which networks to use

As you decide which social networks to use, you will also need to define your strategy for each.

Benefit Cosmetics’ social media manager, Angela Purcaro, told eMarketer: “For our makeup tutorials … we’re all about Snapchat and Instagram Stories. Twitter, on the other hand, is designated for customer service.”

Hootsuite’s own social team even designates different purposes for formats within networks. On Instagram, for example, they use the feed to post high-quality educational infographics and product announcements and Stories to cover live events or quick social media updates.

Pro tip: Write out a mission statement for each network. A one-sentence declaration to keep you focused on a specific goal.

Example: “We will use Twitter for customer support to keep email and call volumes down.”

Or: “We will use LinkedIn for promoting and sharing our company culture to help with recruitment and employee advocacy.”

One more: “We will use Instagram to highlight new products and repost quality content from influencers.”

If you can’t create a solid mission statement for a particular social media channel, you may want to ask yourself if it’s worth it.

Note: While larger businesses can and do tackle every platform, small businesses may not be able to — and that’s ok! Prioritize social platforms that will have the most impact on your business and make sure your marketing team has the resources to handle content for those networks. If you need help focusing your efforts, check out our 18-minute social media plan.

Set up your profiles

Once you’ve decided which networks to focus on, it’s time to create your profiles. Or improve existing ones so they align with your strategy.

Pro tip: Use high-quality images that follow the recommended dimensions for each network. Check out our always-up-to-date social media image size cheat sheet for quick reference.

We’ve also got step-by-step guides for each network to walk you through the process:

Don’t let this list overwhelm you. Remember, it’s better to use fewer channels well than to stretch yourself thin trying to maintain a presence on every network.

Step 6. Find inspiration

While it’s important that your brand be unique, you can still draw inspiration from other businesses that are great on social.

“I consider it my job to stay active on social: to know what’s trending, which campaigns are winning, what’s new with the platforms, who’s going above and beyond,” says Amanda. “This might be the most fun step for you, or the hardest one, but it’s just as crucial as the rest of them.”

Social media success stories

You can usually find these on the business section of the social network’s website. (Here’s Facebook’s, for example.)

Case studies can offer valuable insights that you can apply to your own social media plan.

Award-winning accounts and campaigns

You could also check out the winners of The Facebook Awards or The Shorty Awards for examples of brands that are at the top of their social media game.

For learning and a laugh, check out Fridge-Worthy, Hootsuite’s bi-weekly awards show highlighting brands doing smart and clever things on social media.

Your favorite brands on social media

Who do you enjoy following on social media? What do they do that compels people to engage and share their content?

National Geographic, for example, is one of the best on Instagram, combining stunning visuals with compelling captions.

Then there’s Shopify. The ecommerce brand uses Facebook to sell themselves by showcasing customer stories and case studies.

And Lush Cosmetics is a great example of superior customer service on Twitter. They use their 280 characters to answer questions and solve problems in an extremely charming and on-brand way.

Notice that each of these accounts has a consistent voice, tone, and style. That’s key to letting people know what to expect from your feed. That is, why should they follow you? What’s in it for them?

Consistency also helps keep your content on-brand even if you have multiple people on your social media team.

For more on this, read our guide on establishing a compelling brand voice on social media.

Ask your followers

Consumers can also offer social media inspiration.

What are your target customers talking about online? What can you learn about their wants and needs?

If you have existing social channels, you could also ask your followers what they want from you. Just make sure that you follow through and deliver what they ask for.

Sharing great content is essential, of course, but it’s equally important to have a plan in place for when you’ll share content to get the maximum impact.

Your social media content calendar also needs to account for the time you spend interacting with the audience (although you need to allow for some spontaneous engagement as well).

Set your posting schedule

Your social media content calendar lists the dates and times at which you will publish types of content on each channel. It’s the perfect place to plan all of your social media activities—from images, link sharing, and re-shares of user-generated content to blog posts and videos. It includes both your day-to-day posting and content for social media campaigns.

Your calendar also ensures your posts are spaced out appropriately and published at the best times to post.

Pro tip: You can plan your whole content calendar and get recommended best times to post on every network based on your past engagement rate, impressions, or link click data in Hootsuite.

Determine the right content mix

Make sure your content strategy and calendar reflect the mission statement you’ve assigned to each social profile, so that everything you post is working to support your business goals.

(We know, it’s tempting to jump on every meme, but there should always be a strategy behind your social media marketing efforts!)

why social media is best for marketing

Even though B2B companies seek to sell products to other businesses, B2B marketing is still built on human relationships. Social media has long been used to help grow these relationships, but its importance accelerated last year.

Without in-person events, B2B marketers needed an outlet to connect with prospects and partners. And they found they could do this most effectively via social platforms.

By using social media, B2B leaders:

1. Build Brand Awareness

Across different platforms, companies can tell their story, why they provide the services they offer, and keep audiences updated with customer and employee stories.

If B2B leaders are able to leverage the voice of their employees, they can extend their brand reach even further. Every employee has a personal network, and each network has potentially hundreds of contacts. In turn, each of those contacts is connected to hundreds of other people. When your employees are in deep sync with their networks, they can achieve a lot, not just on social, but in real life too (e.g., create flyers, send direct mail, network at events, etc).

2. Generate Leads

Create meaningful conversations and engagement within their target industry by posting videos, news, data, and interesting trends. Not only do you build credibility with potential customers, but these strategies can result in gaining leads.

3. Nurture Leads

Social selling enables sales professionals to build relationships with leads. By leveraging their thought leadership pieces, social proofing and other content, they can help potential customers solve problems. In turn, this allows your sales team to build trust and credibility.

4. Implement Social Listening

Listen to customers and what people are saying about their company. This gives you a chance to get candid feedback about how others view your brand. It opens a window into improving the weaker areas of your business while reinforcing aspects that already resonate with people.

5. Connect Social Posts to Opportunities

With the right enterprise solution, leaders can drive customer posts to their CRM to understand customers more fully.*

6. Measure Marketing Efforts

Social media platforms and management tools enable you to track key performance metrics (KPIs). You can even assign a monetary value to organic social media engagement. Earned media value (EMV) offers an idea of how much organic social engagement and reach would have cost if you paid in ads.

7. Build Brand Authenticity

Engaging on social media gives brands the opportunity to build trust with potential customers, partners and talent/employees. This is especially true if other people are promoting your brand or products/services to other people. People are almost three times as likely to trust advice or recommendations from family and friends than official brand channels.

8. Drive Thought Leadership

Social media is a great way to learn about the problems and interests of people. In turn, being on social gives brands an opportunity to drive thought leadership by solving problems. Create how-to guides, webinars and other content to help people and, in response, people could trust your brand as their source for guidance.

9. Grow Your Audience

In 2021, 4.48 billion people were using social media. Not only does social give you a window into the largest addressable market online, but it shows you what actual people talk about or like. Once you learn how to solve this market’s problems with thought leadership content, you can build an audience that believes in your brand and products and services.

10. Build a Community

With planning and engagement, you can build an active community around your brand on social. You can leverage employees and customers alike to generate immediate Likes and Shares for your content so that it reaches new audiences.

11. Generate Unique Content at Scale

Social media communities can also be an excellent source of original and thoughtful content. User-generated content (UGC) and employee-generated content (EGC) can speak to brands in authentic ways, but they keep your content publishing pipeline flush with lots of fresh options.

12. Stay Top of Mind With Key People

Spreading thought leadership through social media is a go-to method of meriting the attention of decision-makers and other top stakeholders. Leverage webinars, ebooks, one-pagers, podcasts and other content types to solve problems for other people.

If you want to connect and engage with your future customers, you have to be where they are. And that’s largely on social media.

13 Stats Showing Why Social Media Marketing Is Important

It’s clear that social platforms are great tools for showcasing employee stories, the brand’s vision and values, and creating an emotional connection with audiences (yes, B2B companies should strike the emotional cord just like B2C companies do).

Amid the pandemic, social media became even more important for B2B marketers. In a 2020 LinkedIn survey of 1,200 marketers, three out of four of those in B2B experienced budget cuts, forcing them to put more focus on tactical elements of marketing and short-term investments that clearly pay off.

“Having fewer resources and levers forces you to think differently, and our focus has been on providing value to our customers,” responded in the survey, Simon Morris Senior Director Digital Media Marketing at Adobe EMEA. “We’ve done a lot more to digitally network with them.”

Networking digitally allows teams to connect in new ways, spread company news through word-of-mouth online, and broadcast virtual events.

Why is Social Media Important for Employee Advocacy?

One way companies can think differently about their social media strategy is by developing an employee advocacy program.

Employee advocacy is the promotion of a company by the people who work for it. When employees are proud to be working for a company, they’ll want to let the world know. And when they do so, their voices go further and gain more trust than traditional branding.

Study after study shows that word-of mouth marketing is effective. When employees share their experiences, their social connections are more likely to see their content, leave a comment, and trust the post more.

A study from Fleishman Hillard even found that consumers trust a company’s employees three times more than the company leaders.

Employees should be encouraged to share original posts that promote the company in order to boost organic reach, build brand credibility, and attract better-qualified leads.

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