Social media is an incredibly popular part of the internet. 3.81 billion people use social media which makes up around 49% of the world’s population. Smartphones are very common these days and this is reflected in the use of social media where over 98% of active users will access sites like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat through a mobile device.
What is social media?
Social media is a way to share information, images and content quickly via a platform in real time to an audience. You are able to share information one to one or freely to a wider group. This can be used for sharing holiday photos, opinions, news stories, marketing for businesses or for driving traffic to landing pages.
How can social media help a small business? Whether you have an online business or land based enterprise, social media can help advertise and drive traffic to your website and therefore increase awareness of your brand.
Building a brand
Social media can help you to build a brand. For the sake of this example imagine you have an online business selling your own sports clothing. By using social media you can make people aware of your company name and logo by posting appropriate content, offers and other information across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. What was an online shop can now grow into a proper brand through awareness amongst social media users. Images of people wearing your sports clothes in desirable locations and situations creates interest.
Connecting with customers
Social media allows you to connect with potential and current customers easily and instantly. Customers can ask questions, leave feedback and you can offer support and advice. If you are offering a flash sale or discounting a particular product then you can let your customers know quickly and for free just from posting online.
Listening to your customers is extremely important. By taking some time each day to read the posts on your social media you can see what your customers like and dislike about your product. Are there areas you can improve? Perhaps your customers are mentioning they are unhappy with delivery times or there are other issues. Social media gives you a chance to address problems and reply to customers directly which can help with trust and brand loyalty.
Advertising & marketing
Social media can be an effective way to advertise your products within a budget. You can use Facebook to target specific demographics and areas with your advertising. You set up your campaign and budget and Facebook will turn your advertising towards people that are interested in what you are selling. This provides a great ROI (return on investment) and can have an effective marketing campaign within your budget.
Calls to action
By including links in your posts you can drive customers to interact with your site. Whether this is visiting a landing page, joining a mailing list or liking a certain post this can all help with retention. Social media posts tend to encourage short attention spans as people scroll through pages of photos and comments. It is important to engage with the customer and drive them towards your website and ultimately a sale.
Social responsibility
You can also use the platforms available to increase awareness of your corporate social responsibility. If your business is helping in the local community in some way or only uses ethically produced materials then this is a great way to get that information out there. In a physical shop you could put the information on a hang tag, or you could take out magazine advertising and hope people read it. On social media you have a huge online audience and multiple platforms to spread your company values across.
People are becoming more aware of the environment and the responsibilities that individuals and corporations have so this is an area that should not be ignored as part of your business plan. If you are doing good work then let people know about it.
Landing pages
You have a great website and the hosting package is suitable for your business but you are finding it hard to convert visits into sales, or perhaps the traffic is low.
By clever use of social media you can drive traffic directly to your website and to specific pages. Your sports shop is reducing the price of the latest Air Jordans and so you want to make as many sales as possible while this offer runs. By using social media posts and Facebook advertising you can include a link directly to the sales landing page.
If you are not sure what a sales landing page is then it is simply a webpage that is hosted with your website and its sole purpose is to convert a visit into a sale. It will normally contain a product name, strong image and a short description along with a call to action such as ‘add to basket’ or ‘buy now’. There are short form and long form versions of these pages. The long form tends to be more SEO friendly due to the longer content.
SEO & geolocation
There are other ways to help traffic go to your website and these include SEO (search engine optimisation) and geolocation. In the case of SEO this is where you create content that helps you to rank highly on Google searches. If someone searched for Air Jordan sales online shipping to Canada then it would return a list of online shops that were willing to shop to or inside Canada and also had Air Jordans for sale.
It is important to contain relevant and appropriate keywords and phrases in your content. Similarly, when you set up your website and choose hosting you will want to find relevant companies and searching for Best Web Hosting Canada – November 2020 would bring up popular hosting companies in Canada for that particular year.
Geolocation is where the IP address is logged and then marketing or offers can be targeted at specific locations. If for instance you only shipped within Canada then your advertising would not show up in the social feeds of users in the UK. This way your marketing is targeted and effective
Summary
There are many ways social media can be used to improve your online business. It doesn’t matter how small or large you are, interacting with customers is important and helps to develop trust and loyalty. It is an almost free form of marketing and can drive traffic to your website. If you start to grow then you should also make sure your hosting package is suitable so that you don’t exceed bandwidth or storage capacity.
(Syndicated press content is neither written, edited or endorsed by ED Times)
Small businesses certainly have a lot to gain by using social media effectively.