Without a doubt, social media is revolutionary in the business world, to say the least. Social media is no more an option but a necessity for brands to thrive in today’s digital era. Visible from over the past decade that the rise of social media has been adopted by several companies, because of the vast benefits it can provide.

Day by day, new features are released on these platforms, providing further benefits to companies for various purposes. Although certain platforms may be more suited to specific industry sectors, companies are still making use of as many platforms as they can.

So, if you’re the one who is still behind on this ongoing trend or simply not sure why you should utilise social media. We’ve helped by rounding up the top 5 benefits of social media and how your business could benefit from utilising these social platforms.

1. Search Engine Optimisation

We can all agree that every business would desire to be visible to all its targeted audience. Since, the more visibility, the more customers, it’s that simple.

Well, did you know that social media profiles help increase your visibility on the search engine results page? As when your brand name is searched in the search engines, the search results also trigger these pages to appear, most likely you will have a potential customer who is active on social media and who will be able to view these pages.

As shown below, when McDonald’s is searched within search engines, the Twitter page is one of the first results to be triggered. Try it yourself, search a company’s name and you will see their social media pages appear in the results.

This can also work for products you sell, for example, when you type in ‘Fries’ into a search engine, you will see McDonald appear on the first page. Similarly, if a customer was to search for a product, that you sell. Then most likely there’s a possibility it will appear.

If your social pages appear whenever a search is carried and if this action is carried out multiple times by multiple customers. Google crawlers and bots will recognise your page as valuable to that keyword (i.e. brand name/product) and will continue to filter your brand to a higher ranking, thus increasing your visibility.

2. Trust building platforms

Building positive relationships with your audience is a huge part of good customer service. Social media has had a huge impact on customer service, many companies tend to keep social media profiles that purely focus on customer service. For example American Airlines, who use their profile to provide a customer service, as shown in their bio and tweets.

This method is utilised by several companies, since it is a quick and easy method when compared to other routes, such as queuing in long phone calls waiting for an advisor to speak to you which in some cases can take up to hours till an advisor is available! Even if you write an email to customer service, receiving a response can take more than 24 hours. What happens when the response does not answer your query or you want to ask further questions relating to the response, you have to go through that lengthy process again, which is considered inconvenient.

Social media allows both parties to actively engage with each other. It is a fast and rapid service where you can instantly receive feedback and respond back to queries in no time, demonstrating good customer service and genuine care towards your clients. This allows the customer to build trust in your brand. Ultimately giving your brand a voice.

3. Beat the competition

We 99.9% guarantee that whatever product you sell, or service that you offer. They will be someone from your sector or industry present on at least one social media platform. The image below shows a search for cakes, all the pages appear that deliver a baking/cake service.

Your competitor is on social media promoting their business to your target audience. Giving your competitors the competitive advantage of reaching your audience from another route, which you have still yet to explore. Thus if you want to stay on top of the competition, it is vital to stay current with these trends and understand where your audience is and what social platforms they utilise.

If your targeted audience is present on Facebook, which most likely might be the case since Facebook has 2.2 billion monthly active users worldwide. Then your business should consider utilising the platform that is used by your potential customers to be able to reach them

4. Sales sites

Sales are part of a larger process, in which social media is known to play a huge part. Social media is a good sales tool to generate profit and we have gathered the statistics to prove it.

70% of business-to-consumer marketers have acquired customers through Facebook
84% of CEOs and VPs say they use social media to help make purchasing decisions

Advertising on social media has been the biggest perk for businesses. Promoting and marketing of products and services that gradually lead to generate sales. Social media can be used in two ways to generate sales, either by being regularly active by uploading content and marketing materials to influence the customers buying decision by continually promoting your brand or either running paid adverts to promote your brand and products. As shown in the Nike ad below which is an advert for the new trainers promoted on Facebook.

5. Real time data

Social media generate a wide range of data, from which you can access a wealth of information. Each social media platform has a unique analytic section from which you can gather data for every activity carried out.

For a promoted advert you can interpret the return on investment and for every marketing material or blog uploaded or shared, you can discover which material/blog performed better. Overall, you can gain insight into your audience preferences and tailor your content accordingly.

Now that you are aware of the top benefits that social media can provide, consider researching which social platform is best suited for your industry and start engaging with your targeted audience today to increase brand awareness and drive revenue to your business via social media.