10 Reasons WHY

SOCIAL MEDIA is Good for Business?But that doesn’t mean

it’s easy!

In 2007 social media started a revolution in the world of business. The first day that businesses could post their affinity “pages,” 100,000 signed up. Suddenly, it was not just being used by people to connect to their family and friends who may be miles away; it was also being tapped by entrepreneurs to help their business as well. It was magic.

As we start 2017 however, the feeling is less tingly and more prickly. Social media feels more like warfare and less like a cozy friendship.

In spite of that, it is more pervasive than ever and according to Ryan Holmes on the Hootsuite Blog, “It’s about to be reborn over the course of this year as a hyperfocused business tool—more targeted, simpler to use, and possibly more effective than before.”

More and more businesses, even small ones, are trusting social media and the contacts they make through it. In fact, when The University of Maryland Smith School of Business conducted a study about the relationship between small businesses and social media, it was found out that 75% of businesses already own a company page on social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn while 69% actually post status updates and/or other content that are related to their field of interest.

“Social media has never been more influential, but getting updates in front of users has never been more challenging. To shun Facebook and other networks altogether is to ignore the more than 2 billion users around the globe who rely on social media for news and updates. But to embrace them requires jumping over ever-higher hurdles in the hopes of connecting with customers.” Hootsuite Blog

Are you serious?

Nearly eight-in-ten online Americans (79%) now use Facebook, more than double the share that uses Twitter (24%), Pinterest (31%), Instagram (32%) or LinkedIn (29%). On a total population basis (accounting for Americans who do not use the internet at all), that means that 68% of all U.S. adults are Facebook users, while 28% use Instagram, 26% use Pinterest, 25% use LinkedIn and 21% use Twitter. (Source: Pew Research Center)

With the amount of attention given by businesses to social networking, we need to ponder new processes of using the media.

The new approach is blending paid social media ads with customers, and those customers employees contact, to enhance the sharing and spread of content.

TO HAVE A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THINGS, HERE ARE SOME REASONS WHY SOCIAL MEDIA IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS

And some ways to use it.

You can get more online exposure through social media.

Of course, as a business owner, you want your business to get more exposure and therefore become more visible to your target audience. The good news is that it is more doable now because of social media.

Remember, more people are spending longer hours on social networking sites these days. So, there is this bigger opportunity for you to let them find you online and therefore promote your business.

According to Gartner, more than 80 percent of companies are planning a social media ad campaign in the coming year.

1

You can showcase your brand.

Branding is another crucial factor in any business. A good branding will help you build a better reputation which, eventually, will build trust. Using social media for brand awareness aids in building that reputation. In truth, 71% of business owners admitted using social media for that purpose.

Instead of blasting out updates, brands can now target both followers and non-followers with a high degree of accuracy. Yes, you have to pay for that, but the data captured by networks now lets companies zero in, not just on specific demographic groups, but on “lookalike audiences,” similar to those of competitors. Ads can then be optimized depending on a campaign’s goals—from views to click-throughs and more—and budgets can be allocated more exactingly.

2

Through social media, you can hear what people say.3

Social listening is the process of monitoring digital conversations to understand what customers are saying about a brand and industry online.

Marketing teams primarily use social listening for community management, such as identifying customer pain points and providing direct consumer response to questions, complaints, and comments. It is also used to surface feedback that could help to differentiate their brand, product, or service.

As digital channels proliferate, there are myriad ways for consumers to share feedback and experiences —

both directly and anonymously.

Social listening allows marketing teams to prioritize and evaluate feedback from the public. This feedback

can be used to create more appealing offerings, both in the form of product and services as well as content and advertisements.

Why is social listening important?

One important distinction: Social listening monitors individual conversations about a brand and industry. It does not provide insight into the direct impact of your marketing programs.

In a Sentence“We used social listening to monitor how often Twitter users mention our brand.”

Social media marketing should generate Leads.4

After social listening, the next step is lead generation.

You need to embrace Inbound Marketing for this. By developing a buyer persona and understanding the buyer journey, you will artfully weave your social media through the entire process. If you are unfamiliar with Inbound Marketing, Hub Spot (https://www.hubspot.com/) is a great free resource for learning.

Facebook is one of the leading social networking sites when it comes to the generation of leads. In fact, 77% of B2C companies admitted to generating leads through Facebook.

Similarly, for B2B companies, LinkedIn can be a good place to advertise. However, if you are both B2C & B2B, or just B2C it is not a good place.

Measurable Marketing That Moves You // © 2017 - All information in this document is copyright protected and the property of Anvil Media Inc.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a very powerful tool for B2B advertisers. LinkedIn offers the ability to reach professionals across all verticals.

TargetingLinkedIn allows advertisers to target status updates through promoted posts and use ads to reach specific audiences. Some of these targeting capabilities include:— Company Size— Industry— Job Function/Title— Seniority— Geography— Groups

These capabilities help your company’s message stay consistent with the audience while not wasting valuable clicks on irrelevant users.

Ad TypesSponsored ContentText AdsSponsored InMailDisplay Ads*Dynamic Ads*

The above is from a LinkedIn SlideShare. Here is a link to the full presentation as well as others from Anvil. http://www.slideshare.net/anvilmedia/anvils-lunch-learn-on-the-8-most-popular-advertising-channels/12

Social media attracts more customers.5

What’s really cool about social media is that it can really help you gain new customers. Since it has a wide coverage, social media has the capability to influence people and convince them that certain products and services are worth buying.

Facebook is one great example. Still known as the leading social networking site in the world today, Facebook has made selling even better because of its influence. In 2013 alone, there was already 23% of marketers who actually gained more clients through the use of this social networking site.

Social media allows you to contact your prospective customers with personal touch.

6

Everybody is online now, regardless of age. That is why, if you are a business owner who will use social media for business, it is worth noting that there are already different kinds of people there.

Each of them has a different set of needs, too. So, when you talk to these people, you should not just address them as one. What you should do instead is address them individually. Address each of them with personal touch and understand their concerns individually.

%ofU.S.adultswhouseatleastonesocialmediasite,byage

18-29 30-49 50-64 65+

2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016

0

25

50

75

100

You can build relationships with potential customers.7

Social media influences and permeates many aspects of daily life for Americans today, and the workforce is no exception. These digital platforms offer the potential to enhance worker productivity by fostering connections with colleagues and resources around the globe.

A Pew Research Center survey of 2,003 American adults (including 795 who are currently employed on a full- or part-time basis) conducted Sept. 11-14 and 18-21, 2014, finds that social media plays some role in the lives of many American workers – but that role is not always clear-cut or entirely positive.

Social Media Goes to Work

2

PEW RESEARCH CENTER

www.pewresearch.org

34%

27

24

20

17

17

12

12

Take a mental break from work

Connect with friends and family at work

Make or support professional connections

Build or strengthen personal relationships with coworkers

Get information that helps solve problems at work

Learn about someone they work with

Ask work-related questions of people outside their organization

Ask work-related questions of people inside their organization

Social media influences and permeates many aspects of daily life for Americans today, and the workforce is no exception. These digital platforms offer the potential to enhance worker productivity by fostering connections with colleagues and resources around the globe. At the same time, employers might worry that employees are using these tools for non-work purposes while on the job or engaging in speech in public venues that might reflect poorly on their organization.

A Pew Research Center survey of 2,003 American adults (including 795 who are currently employed on a full- or part-time basis) conducted Sept. 11-14 and 18-21, 2014, finds that social media plays some role in the lives of many American workers – but that role is not always clear-cut or entirely positive.1

Workers turn to social media for a range of reasons while at work, with taking a mental break being among the most common

Today’s workers incorporate social media into a wide range of activities while on the job. Some of these activities are explicitly professional or job-related, while others are more personal in nature. The survey asked Americans who are employed full- or part-time about eight different ways they might use social media while on the job and found that:

34% ever use social media while at work to take a mental break from their job

27% to connect with friends and family while at work

24% to make or support professional connections 1 Social media users are defined as workers who said they use one of the five major social media sites studied here, see the topline for the full list.

Workers use social media at work for many reasons; taking a mental break is one of the most common % of workers who ever use social media platforms to …

Source: Survey conducted Sept. 11-21, 2014. “Social Media and the Workplace.”

PEW RESEARCH CENTER

You can reinforce positive behavior and loyalty through “User-generated content”

8

For companies, it’s a way to build ties with customers while leaning on users for crowdsourced inspiration and creativity at the same time. Plus, encouraging your own customers to create and share branded content represents a sort of end-run around algorithms that limit the reach of posts from corporate accounts.

But how do you incentivize users to generate all this clickable content? Well, an old-fashioned contest never hurts. Hootsuite’s #IWorkFromHere campaign, was used to highlight how the Hootsuite app lets businesses manage social media on the go. More than 1,400 people shared entries—from locales as exotic as the Andes Mountains and the cockpit of a helicopter—for a chance to win roundtrip flights anywhere in the world. The result: 2.2 million people a day saw these posts, which translated to more than 2,000 new mobile users.

Rank higher in searches9

Social media signals has an impact in SEO (search engine optimization). The more active you get on social networking sites, the more searchable you become.

For example, you post something on your website and because it’s really cool and people like it a lot, they share it many times using their social media accounts. The good news is that this content of yours will actually help you rank higher because they prove to be good content. It is a form of linkbuilding, which is also another important thing in SEO.

Another way: use social media as a customer care channel.

Research from JD Power found that 67 percent of consumers go to sites like Twitter and Facebook for customer care. Meanwhile, Nielsen reported that 33 percent prefer to contact brands on social media rather than other channels, like 1-800 numbers.

Experiment. Go active, go interactive!10

Social media is dynamic; all the platforms change, add features and make updates. Sometimes you can be taken by surprise, but stay with it. Changes are not made to make things harder, but to make them

work better for users. Sometimes that means more challenges for businesses and advertisers, but it can also mean better options.

For instance, Instagram is one of the most popular social media apps today, with more than 600 million users – and

counting. One of their best features, Stories, has well over 150 million daily users and is used by small and large brands alike. With paid option to be launched very soon, marketers would be able to promote beautiful full-screen ads to their target market.

Customer engagement is the golden rule.11

If users are NOT interacting with your content or posts, you might be doing something wrong.

Every platform today has its own analytics so you can see the numbers tell all. Analyze the patterns and think about how you can improve. Check your response rate. How long does it take for you to respond to customer questions/complaints/comments? The more responsive you are, the higher your engagement. Plus, this helps to build your reputation and authority in your field.

About 81 percent of small and medium-sized businesses are now leveraging social media for sales and growth. Don’t get left behind. Aside from being seen on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, it’s more important to understand how to utilize their features efficiently to better serve your customers.

From We Are Social, the Global Web Index Slideshare Click here for the whole thing

The “free reach” is over. The Reachpocalypse is here!12

You don’t need to spend a ton of money, but you will have to spend some, and time as well. The old days of easy “organic reach” are over.

For businesses, the decline of organic social media reach needn’t be a doomsday scenario—quite the contrary. The new social media order that’s taking shape in 2017 promises companies the kind of precision and measurable results long expected from traditional channels like print and broadcast. Social media had a rough year in 2016, but things are looking up.

Facebook organic reach for business pages is plummeting, and will drop even further because Facebook is a public company that has fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders to maximize returns.

Really, we have to pay for advertising? But...13

In a new report, Gartner’s industry analysts are unusually blunt: “Sustained success in social marketing now requires paid advertising.” More than 80 percent of companies reportedly planning to deploy a social ad campaign in the next year.

Paid ads offer a surefire way to reach a desired audience on social media—for a price. But there’s another critical and generally overlooked route to getting the message out that comes with no extra cost: your own employees.

Employee advocacy—inviting coworkers to share brand messages on their own social media accounts—can have a range of benefits. For starters, you expand your reach, often exponentially in the case of large companies. Plus, because messages are being shared from personal accounts (rather than the company’s), they generally reach a higher percentage of followers.

Content shared by employees reportedly gets eight times more

engagement, on average, than content

shared by brand channels—and is re-shared 25 times more

frequently.

Video is King for 201714

Small businesses have used video to stay topical and quickly communicate relevant information to their customers. Here are some stats to get you kicking:

Real estate listings which have video receive 403% more inquiries than those without.

64% of users are more likely to buy product online after watching a video.

90% of users confess that product videos help them in their decision-making.

Find out what is relevant to your customer’s life and give them the information that they want.

Tribes, Community & Crowds15

There is untapped potential inherent to social media that can help brands connect with member of the audience, while connecting audiences to one another.

People don’t want to just do business with a business. They want to be connected with the people behind the business, and they want know how the business interacts with customers like them.

This is why review websites, social sharing of content, crowdfunding, etc. have been so effective. The power of tribes, community, and crowds have only begun to realize their potential.

The next generation of social media will promote greater access and transparency between brands and their fans, creating the sense of belonging and community the next generation craves.

Brands that embrace this new normal and invest in building

relationships will be the winners in 2017.

http://difdesign.com/blog/news/advertising/2010/social-media-and-small-business

http://www.thestrategyweb.com/study-social-networking-eat-up-most-time-of-web-usage

https://econsultancy.com/blog/64074-why-your-brand-should-use-social-listening-right-now

http://www.impactbnd.com/blog/13-awesome-lead-generation-statistics

http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/blog/2012/10/09/reality-check-social-media-and-mobile/

http://www.i4cp.com/trendwatchers/2010/08/11/social-media-goes-to-work

https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/4-creative-ways-to-reward-your-facebook-fans/

http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/01/31/how-social-signals-impact-search-engine-rankings/

http://cjgdigitalmarketing.com/blog

http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/06/22/social-media-and-the-workplace/

http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/

http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/social-media-strategy-planning-essentials-6-reasons-need-social-media-strategy/?new=1

https://blog.hootsuite.com/companies-will-use-social-media-2017/

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/24-statistics-show-social-media-future-customer-service

http://mashable.com/2014/02/13/linkedin-social-media-study/#4B_HYZRvhgqA

http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-tools/this-chart-explains-the-reachpocalypse-and-why-facebook-is-laughing-all-the-way-to-the-bank/

https://www.seoexpertpage.com/social-media-strategy-2017/

Sources