The Effects of Social Networks on Business
Why are social networks important in business?
Social networks connect individuals with other people and businesses by allowing them to share information, ideas, and messages. Companies also use social networks to create and increase brand recognition, promote products and services, and answer customer queries and concerns.
How can you leverage these platforms in your business? And what is good about social networking?
Social networking makes relationships more personal
Social media is a two-way channel where you have an opportunity to build a rapport with your clients and prospects. These platforms are not about the amazing sales pitches you deliver to the audience.
Social networking is all about interactions and open dialogue with users. Social media helps you humanize a brand and build genuine relationships with your community. It shortens the distance from your audience, especially when you address them from personal accounts.
You can promote your business more effectively
According to a study, 78 percent of small businesses attract new customers through social media.
The most common way to promote a business on social networking sites is advertising.
Thanks to the advanced options of targeting and re-marketing you are able to address the message to the audience that would more likely be interested in your products and services. Facebook and Twitter paid to advertise are relatively cheap and with a well-knitted social media strategy your efforts will pay off.
However, paying to advertise is not the only way to reach out to target customers. A more time-consuming, but effective method to get a new customer is reaching out to consumers who report a certain need that your company can fulfill.
You get valuable insights about the audience and your business
Users ask, and recommend, but they also share reviews.
They are the best source of information for product development. They are the ones who use your service so they know best what can be improved to fit their needs.
If something does not work well they are likely to report it on social media exposing it to plenty of other consumers. Their feedback is gold for getting answers about your customers’ preferences and behavior. Use it to find inspiration and ideas for new variants of your products and improvements in a current offer.
Social networking induces loyalty
According to a report published by Texas Tech University, brands that regularly engage in social media conversations tend to observe an increased brand loyalty.
When your company is present on social networking sites you are more approachable and reliable in the eyes of customers and prospects.
This is directly connected to the first point of this article. If you can build more personal and genuine relationships with a community, customers will be less likely to switch between brands. Showing them a human face will make you a sort of their friend rather than just another company that sells good products and that is replaceable. Remember that it is coming much easier to swap a service provider, but can be harder to dump a close mate.
Social media increases website traffic
Finally, social networking presence is essential in attracting traffic to your website. Not only it directly drives traffic to a page, but it also improves search ranking. As you probably know, SEO is an enduring and laborious process that helps you get to the top of Google’s search results. External links, number of visits, selected keywords, and website content have an impact on how well you turn out against your competitors in search engines. Social media can help you improve these factors, both thanks to direct traffic, but also shared links through social media users’ profiles.
Wrap-up
Social networking is a tool. If you can leverage its possibilities your business will definitely gain from it. With a good strategy, some creativity, and additional tools you can achieve marketing goals with fewer resources.
