Drawing on articles by Jayson DeMers from Forbes and the Australian Government’s Business sector here are some ways in which social media can add value to your business.

Build Brand Recognition

Any opportunity to advertise and market your brand is important when it comes to the success of your business. Social media platforms allow for much easier and accessible communication between your brand and potential or existing customers. This also allows you to connect with customers on a more personal level as well as give your business a voice.

Increase Revenue

Social media can be used to generate revenue for your business. By advertising your services and products on social platforms, you can create your own marketing channel and reap all the benefits. The humanized element of social media allows for more personal interaction with the brand, which in turn, attracts more customers. Building an audience on social media can greatly improve sales and existing conversion rates.

Attract Customers

With every social media platform that you use, there is a higher possibility of attracting new customers to your brand. Without using social platforms your inbound traffic is limited to people who are already familiar with your brand. By running social media campaigns and promotions, you can direct the traffic towards your website and business, creating opportunity for more leads and sales.

Research

Knowing what the public is saying about your brand can help you improve your business strategies and performance. Simply using social media as a platform to interact with customers and build customer relations can add real value to your services and products. Using social media as an outlook onto your competitors can help keep you up to speed on what is happening within your business space.

Decrease Marketing Costs

Just a few hours a week of social marketing can be enough to increase traffic to your business at very little cost to you. Even as little as one hour a day spent on your social media content and communication strategy can add value to your business. Paid advertising on social media is relatively cheap if you are starting out so start with a small budget to improve revenue and then increase your efforts as your sales improve.

Network

Use social media platforms to network with like-minded people and create connections inside and outside of your business space. Networking on social media can also be used as a way of advertising job vacancies and recruiting new employees for your business.

Search-engine discoverability

Your business’s social media network can have an influence on your website’s ranking on various search engines. By using the SEO strategy and creating a larger social media presence, this may increase your ranking substantially. Being active on your social platform can help your brand appear more credible and trustworthy by the search engines.

Build customer insights and experiences

Any interaction on social media is a way of publically showcasing your customer service level to build your relationships with your customers. By replying straight away to complaints or comments on social platforms, your customers and the rest of the public can see the extent of your customer dedication and assistance. This also allows you to gain valuable information about your customers by “social listening”. You are able to monitor what the public thinks of your business in a more direct and immediate way, which helps you make improvements and changes within your business on a constant basis.

For more information on amaSocial, visit amasocial.co.za. Alternatively, connect with them on Facebook or on Twitter.