Having a strong web presence is a must for nearly all businesses, but these days the real game-changer is social media. While you can get by with only having a website, staying active on social media can open up a whole new world of opportunities for businesses of all sizes. Whether the business is creating its own personality or just posting photos to maintain relevance, the ability to interact in real time with all of your followers is changing how many businesses operate.
Maximizing your exposure.
Social media can drastically increase your brand awareness. With just one click you’re able to share your message with a vast network of people. And the more people interact with you, the more others will see it. This sort of exposure tends to be very beneficial since it incorporates the thoughts and comments of other social media users rather than simply having the content of the original post. These comments serve as unsolicited advice or recommendations, and may be helpful at persuading viewers to start or continue their business with that company.
Creating a personality for your business.
Communicating publicly, and in real time, gives the opportunity for businesses to create their own personalities through their social media accounts. Many times it’s this sort of personality that helps one company to stand out from the rest. Recently Wendy’s has been getting a lot of publicity due to their antics online. Their overly sassy and rude posts have many people laughing and talking about them more than ever, but without social media they wouldn’t be able to interact with the public in such a way.
Staying relevant.
In today’s world people are being overwhelmed with massive amounts of information every single day. Because of this, it’s becoming more and more of a struggle to stay relevant. Staying active on social media can help in multiple ways. First, maintaining a recurring posting schedule will ensure that the business stays fresh in people’s minds. There is a local donut shop that continually convinces me to get up and go get some donuts just from their posts online reminding people that they still have donuts left for the day. Second, communicating with people in the comments will provide a better understanding of consumer needs, and will lead to more solutions on how to best meet clients’ needs and stay relevant.
Serving the customer.
The transparency of social media makes it much more important to have great customer service. It also tends to make it a little easier. Getting in contact with a business can be as easy as leaving a comment on a post. While it can be difficult to keep up with multiple social media accounts and reply to every comment or message, when done well it shows a great level of customer service that wouldn’t be apparent unless you were interacting in person. This also makes it possible to monitor the competition for ways to improve or stand out.
These are just a few of the many ways that a social media presence can enhance a business. The most important thing to remember is to stay active, as a dormant social media account is worse than none at all. There is no one way to properly portray a business online. Just find what gets the most interactions, and go from there. Whether it’s a photograph of a new project or inventory, or a question to get opinions, it’s all useful for someone.
Which social network best suits your business? Get a great comparison of the major players here.
