Does Your Business Need Social Media

Internet Marketing 101: Local Businesses Need Social Media

The Great Social Media Debate Kickoff Facts:

• Approximately 83% of B2B marketers have stated that they consistently use social media.
• Interestingly, 60% of baby boomer consumers look for promotions on social media platforms.
• Unfortunately, 24% of small businesses still lack a productive social media presence.

The age of social media is upon us. Each day, millions of people use social platforms to post constant updates about their lives, their interests, and random things that generates a heavy intrigue into the world of social media. Social media allows people to connect and interact with others, receive vital new information, and check the newest world trends. Overall, social media has grown into an vibrant pastime for its users. Nonetheless, social media is also a brilliant marketing tool for this very reason.

By using social platforms properly, and following social media marketing best practices you can effectively market your business to an unlimited audience. In fact, millions of business use social to achieve their web marketing goals. Unfortunately, many local businesses forgo creating their social media accounts. As you will find out in this article, social media is an important marketing tool that can yield numerous positive results for local businesses.

Everyone is Using Social Media

 

It rarely needs to be stated that social media is popular in today’s digital age, especially when the data speaks for itself. According to Sprout Social, 30% of millennial interact with brands at least once each day on social platforms. Surprisingly, 80% of baby boomers use social apps and media to view online promotions. Accordingly, this data proves that social media has the diverse attention of two of the most important demographic cohorts in the United States. Therefore, you could benefit your entire local business if you establish a strong social presence.

Businesses that use social media have often praised this platform as an effective marketing tool. In fact, 83% of B2B marketers have stated that they use social platforms for their clients. Rightfully so, there are approximately 50 million businesses that possess a Facebook page, and the social media giant is estimated to receive $21.83 billion in ad revenue alone.

In sum, both consumers and businesses are using social platforms for their own gain, and it’s working. Consumers are often getting what they want from ads, and businesses are collecting quality leads as a result. By refusing to setup any social accounts, you could prevent your local business from capitalizing on these open opportunities.

Social Media Places Your Business in the Spotlight

 

The essence of social media is that it resembles the form of a gigantic online community. That’s primarily because the interactive media is a vivid online community that is home to millions of online consumers. Small businesses are often entrenched in the communities they are involved in. In order to take your business to the next level, you will have to aptly communicate and interact with your customers online. You simply can’t expect a potential customer to visit your business to visit your business and interact with you. Instead, you will have to visit the primary source of online communities, and that’s social!

According to the Pew Research Center, 40% of individuals usually express their consumer experiences on social media. This data suggests that a majority of consumers will either complement or criticize a business online, which could potentially be seen by millions of people.

If you are providing a quality service, you can successfully accumulate outstanding reviews, which will urge other consumers to likely do business with you. Essentially, word of mouth is an practical marketing avenue. This avenue is much greater on social media where consumers regularly leave their feedback on a wide array of businesses.

Encourage Influencer Marketing

One of the most important aspects of consumerism is brand awareness. If an consumer is familiar with a particular brand, it’s more likely that individual will purchase that product over another, even if the ignored product has better features. For example, many people are familiar with the popular beverage product, Coca Cola. If a new product were to be made today that supersedes the taste and quality of a Coke, would consumers buy it? It’s not likely, mainly since Coke is an established brand. The same concept applies to other products. However, the common issue for many local businesses is that brand awareness is difficult to increase organically. Fortunately, influencer marketing is an effective remedy to this dilemma.

Influencer marketing is basically the activity in which an individual with a large audience or online presence (influencer) promotes your brand on their online channel. According to Bigcommerce, nearly 25% of consumers are influenced by this form of marketing. The process of influencer marketing is actually simple and relatively straightforward. All you have to do is find the right influencer that matches your brand. For instance, if you are selling laptops, find a popular influencer that reviews quality laptops on their social media and contact them to setup a partnership.

To help you on your way, there is a tool you can use online to expedite this process, and it’s called Grin. On this platform, businesses can connect with like-minded influencers and manage their entire influencer marketing campaign with convenience.

Social Media Marketing is Affordable

24% of local businesses are still not using social media. Sadly, these businesses are missing out on the various collective benefits that social media can provide. In addition, these businesses are also turning down a cost-effective marketing tool. Unlike traditional advertising methods such as print media, social ads, and commercials, social media marketing is relatively affordable and can accommodate a budget of any size.

As a matter of fact, 53% of individuals who interact with a brand on social media are likely to become faithful customers, according to Convince and Convert. Without the massive effort that is required of most traditional advertising methods, social media marketing is essentially a free marketing tool that allows businesses to control their budget and obtain a high return on investment.

Facebook offers an great advertising platform platform that allows businesses to experiment with different ad campaigns depending on their budget. Even with a small budget, local businesses can still increase their brand awareness and conversion rates. More importantly, unlike other advertising methods, you can afford to take a risk with social media marketing. Since you can control your budget, you can still collect meaningful leads even if you don’t achieve your desired results with your social media ad campaign.

Social Media Provides an SEO Boost

Many local businesses tend to forget that a stable social media presence can benefit their long-term SEO goals. Major search engines such as Bing and Google tend to rank websites with reputed social profiles higher than the businesses that lack these accounts. Therefore, it’s not only enough to consistently update your website content and blog. You must also regularly update your listings on review websites and local directories. Google uses a system known as the tri-modal algorithm that determines how businesses are ranked online. One of the most important elements of this algorithm relates is the count of your mentions on social media.

It is crucial to constantly stay engaged on social platforms because doing so can give your local business a substantial SEO boost. Considering that Google ranks socially engaged businesses high in search results, you can take advantage of this exposure. Did you know that 75% who conduct searches on nearby businesses visit them the same day. As a matter of fact, 30% of those visits result in a purchase.

Generate Quality Leads

In the broadest sense, social media serves as a liaison between your online community as your business. If you are supplying users with rich and useful content, you are urging prospective customers to visit your website and make a purchase. Accordingly, if you provide your followers with content that they need to make a purchase, they will likely interact with your business and become quality leads. In order to maximize your leads, you will have to take an all-in approach towards creating specialized content geared towards the specific consumer group you are trying to reach.

For example, if you are selling hair products, you have to give your users captivating information that will inspire a purchase. To do so, you can post regular content on how certain hair products promote hair growth and give daily facts that can help users succeed in their hair journey. As such, your content can establish your business as an authoritative online store, giving you more opportunities to convert your new leads into sales. However, this is only part of the equation.

Using your content to convert your leads into satisfied customers can be difficult yet rewarding. Once a customer becomes satisfied with your product or service and praises your business on social media, your business can benefit tremendously According to the Pew Research Center, 50% of Americans value comments that offer praise to local businesses. This content inspires other consumers to become leads for your business, and these comments appear to be valid and unbiased to other consumers who may be interested in what you are providing.

Social Media Promotes Foot Traffic

One of the best aspects of any social platform is that it commonly works both ways for small business owners. By creating a social media profile, you don’t have to always search for followers. Often times, people will be more than happy to connect with your business on social media. According to Neil Patel, your regular customers will be more likely to follow your social media profiles if you can simply increase your own brand awareness.

In your store or place of business, post signage and window decals to urge your customers to follow you on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can even use a QR code, which will make it easier for customers to find your social profiles just by scanning the barcode.

Final Words

All in all, it’s imperative for local businesses to use social media. There are a variety of opportunities to take advantage of if you can sustain a productive social media presence. The process of doing so isn’t as complicated as you may thing, however. The basic principles of social media marketing, outlined in this article, should be enough to give you a head start towards your way of boosting your online presence and SEO ranking.

Though, your success of using social platforms for your business will depend on your own experimentation. If you have anything to add to this article, of if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to leave your comments below.

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