Social media is one of the best ways to market a small business and communicate with customers. However, in a study done earlier this year, only 53% of small businesses* are on social media. While you might not have the time or resources to put a lot of effort into creating a large social media presence, it is still important to be using social media.
Level the playing ground
There’s a good chance that most of your competitors (at least the reputable ones) are already using social media. Your competitors get an automatic leg up if you’re not using social media.
Create a community
Social media is unique in that instead of marketing to your customers, you get to have a conversation with your followers. You can interact and engage with them, which builds trust and fosters a loyal customer base. In fact, consumers are 72% more likely* to purchase something from a small business after interacting with them on twitter. This also gives you the opportunity to quickly see if any customers are unhappy so that you can correct it before it affects your business.
Free and easy
Using social media sites is one of the cheapest ways to market yourself. While you can pay to boost your page and posts, for the most part it is free. Even if you’re new to social media and don’t know much about using it for marketing purposes, just using it to share information and interact with your customers can go a long way.
Stay top of mind
Using social media can help make your brand more recognizable. It helps you stay top of mind and gives your brand a personality. One of the ways to make your brand more recognizable through social media is to make sure you use your logo as the main photo on your page. This way, every time you post, your followers will see your logo and be reminded of you. If you don’t already have a logo, try out our free logo designer.
Boost Presence in Google Search Results
Social media pages are a great way to help make you appear higher up in google search results when someone is searching something related to your business. Google pays attention to specific phrases and information in descriptions on social pages to determine the order of search results. This is commonly referred to as search engine optimization (SEO). This gives you another opportunity to show up higher in a potential customer’s search results.
For more online (and offline) marketing tips, check out “New Ways to Get Discovered“.
*https://clutch.co/agencies/resources/social-media-2015-small-business-survey
*http://www.slideshare.net/hootsuite/10-social-media-marketing-tips-for-small-businesses
