How SMEs Can Leverage From The Power Of   Social Media

From our previous publication, we defined social media and the functions of social media manager or consultants. Here we’re looking at how small and medium enterprises and entrepreneurs can take advantage or leverage from the power of social media sites to grow their business.

There is one thing common to every business whether big or small and that is “recognition”. Businesses and individuals want to be identified with what they do or stand for, that is what had brought about various publicity and advertisement on newspapers, radio, television, billboards, and flyers etc. It is imperative for any serious entrepreneur to advertise his business using every medium possible to achieve result.

Big organisations with huge budget for marketing and promotion can adopt different forms of advertising media to promote their business such as television, radio, billboard, promotional programmes etc. The objective of this is either to increase sales or build strong organisational image however, this is not possible for small businesses considering the cost of advertising. Social media has offered a free for all platform for creating awareness using social network, connections and friends and small and medium enterprises can leverage on this and promote their business thereby leading to improved sales.

Below are benefits that SMEs stand to gain if they incorporate social media into their business activities:

  1. Cost effective Marketing

The first thing I would like us to take cognisance of is the fact that promoting your brand, business, services or personality on social media cost you little or no money when compared to other media. However, businesses without any budget to promote their business on social sites have options that will enable them to create awareness, build online community and conversions, though it will take a longer period than when budget is allocated for business promotion.

2. Targeted audiences

Geographical-targeting is an effective way to send your message out to a specific audience or demographic based on their location. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have tools that allow you to reach your target audience with the right content and message. For example, on facebook, you can target your ad to ‘Location, Age etc. Also, if you want to send out a post to people who speak Spanish, geo-targeting is an easy and effective way to do it.

3. Find new customers and expand your audience

Social networks allow small businesses to reach their current customers and potential customers. For example, I have personally made good sales from social media site like facebook just by posting pictures of products on facebook and when some of my friends click on it, they are directed to my website.

4. Receive instant feedback from your customers

Social media for business gives you instant access to positive or negative feedback, which provides you with valuable insights on the customer perspective. For example, if you launch a new product and share it on social media, you’ll instantly learn what your customers think of it. Another way to gain customer perspective with social media is by learning how they use your product. Brands often offer new products or services based on their customers’ original ideas.

5. Increase website traffic and search ranking

Social media is one of the fastest ways to direct traffic to your website. Not only do social media help you direct people to your website, but the more social media shares you receive, the higher your search ranking will be. For example, if every person who follows smesmedia on Twitter retweets this post, it’s more likely to rank higher in Google’s search engine results page for variations of “social media for business.”

6. Share content easier and faster with social media

In the past, marketers faced the challenge of ensuring their content reach their customers in the shortest possible time. With the help of social media, sharing content got easier and faster. When you use social media for business, specifically for sharing content about your business, all you need to do is simply share it on your brand’s social network accounts. But keep in mind that getting your customers to share your content with their followers means you need to make sure your social media content aligns to your brand and interests your audience.

7. Build business relationships with customers

Social media is great for creating meaningful relationships with your customers. For example, social media allows tourism brands to create dialogue with travelers, therefore creating relationships with customers before, during, and after they have booked a trip with the company. This kind of social media dialogue between brands and customers is something traditional advertising will never achieve.

8. Increase brand awareness with little or no budget

Social media for business has allowed companies to increase brand awareness and reach of their brand at little to no cost. The costs associated with these strategies are a lot higher with traditional advertising methods. Recently, marketing departments across companies started hiring community managers to increase brand awareness and reach through social media. Community managers foster relationships with online audiences in different regions.

9. Impacts Organic Search Results – SEO 

Google is smart. It constantly work to give people the most relevant search results possible. Social media signals have become one of the major factors in ranking websites in these search results. Creating engaging and shareable content on these social media platforms signals to search engines like Google that people enjoy what you are saying, thus giving you domain authority over sites that aren’t active on social media.

Social Media can be a useful part of your marketing mix. It gives your business a human voice and an competitive edge

10. Learn about your customers 

Customer statistics are easy to learn over sites like Facebook and Twitter. From basic demographics, to preferences, interests and likes of each groups, individuals can be defined.

Implementing A Small Business Social Media Strategy is one of the best and easiest way small businesses can achieve business success.

Have you any examples of recent case studies showing social media and the way businesses have been using the tool?…………….

Kindly share your experience(s) in the comments’ section below.

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