Did you know that within the social media space, there are conversations happening at this very moment that will define your brand? If you don’t capitalize on this vast and growing landscape, your competitors will, and you won’t like the outcome.
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Business owners may not realize it yet but social media optimization is now a crucial marketing necessity if their venture is to compete in this economy. The emergence of social networks over the past few years has changed the way businesses reach out to their audience. In fact, it is no longer enough to have a website, get backlinks, and rank well on Google. Today, a successful business needs essential elements: networking, awareness, engagement, trust, and loyalty – all of which are achievable through social media.
Social Media Optimization: A Legitimate Business Need
You might still be wondering, just how important is having a Social Media Optimization campaign for your business. Well, let us help you put things in perspective.
- 1 in 4 people worldwide are social media users (eMarketer)
- 1 in 6 minutes spent online worldwide is spent on social media platforms (comScore)
- It took 13 years for television to reach an audience of 50 million people (United Nations Cyberschoolbus)
- It only took Facebook 2 years!
Without a solid social media optimization strategy, it will be difficult for businesses to make the most out of this trend. Even coping with it will be a struggle. Social media is indeed growing and evolving fast. It’s involving more and more people connecting with each other, sharing thoughts and feelings through status messages, likes, tweets, links, photos, videos, and etc.
How connected are you to your target audience? How many people are talking about your business? When a potential customer searches for your business’ name on Google, are they going to find (aside from your website) professionally designed and updated social media profiles?
Social Networks as Marketing Tools
In the “State of the Media: Social Media Report,” global information and measurement company Nielsen reported that social media has changed how consumers are influenced to buy. “Consumer decisions and behaviors are increasingly driven by the opinions, tastes, and preferences of an exponentially larger, global pool of friends, peers, and influencers,” the report said.
The Nielsen study also found that, each month, social media users:
- Read about other customer experiences (70%)
- Learn more about business products and services (65%)
- Compliment brands (53%)
- Express how they feel about brands they like or don’t like (50%)
This is both a challenge and a cause for celebration for marketers. While it will be more difficult to control brand messaging, it also opens up new channels for business owners to reach their prospects. If you have a social networking strategy, you can influence how prospects see your brand, and eventually gain their awareness, engagement, trust, and loyalty.
How to Take Advantage of Social
From account setup to maintenance and tracking, there’s a plethora of actions that can benefit the online social presence of your business. Some of the more important actions you can take, and take immediately if possible, are as follows:
Share Updates via Facebook – If you’re going to inform people of your events, updates, and promotions, make sure to include Facebook in the plan. The biggest of them all, the world’s largest social network now has 1.11 billion monthly active users.
Share Updates via Google Plus – Google’s own social network now has 500 million registered members, 359 million of which are active. Apart from its usual social properties, Google+ is crucial for marketing because of its SEO or search engine optimization benefits. A recent correlation study by Internet marketing software developer Moz found that high ranking pages tend to have more +1’s.
Tweet Regularly – Establish your presence by posting regular updates on the micro-blogging site. MediaBistro estimates that 67% of Twitter users are far more likely to buy from the brands they follow on Twitter. Twitter’s own survey shows that 63% of people follow SMBs to show their support. Some 85% “feel more connected” to the business after following them.
Join LinkedIn Discussions – LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with 238 million members. It’s a great way to build your credibility and gain customer trust. Feel free to join relevant discussions in over 2.1 million LinkedIn groups.
Create Hype through YouTube – YouTube needs no introduction but to get a glimpse of its power as a web traffic source and social platform, here are some interesting figures. Over 1 billion unique visitors use it every month. Nielsen reports that YouTube has a better reach than any cable network when it comes to the 18-34 U.S. age group. Video is an exciting format and YouTube enables you to take advantage of it.
Social Media Optimization Benefits
The problem with networking through social media is the time and dedication needed to ensure you have a regular presence. Your followers need to see constant updates on your accounts. Unfortunately, business owners cannot afford to spend all their time away from the core business posting status updates or commenting on discussions. Good thing we can help you in this area. It is, after all, our expertise.
We will help you:
- Expand your network (acquire friends, fans, followers, connections, join groups)
- Increase awareness (through tweets, status messages, posts, etc.)
- Generate engagement (through discussions, commenting)
- Promote trust and customer loyalty (with regular updates, promos)
- And boost this further with the amplifying power of social media
We can draft a social media strategy that can help you achieve your business goals, and then help you execute the plan… so you can remain focused on your core operations, and push the business from that end.
We’re offering free in-depth consultation on how social media can help grow your business today. Call us now or send us a message to schedule your free consultation on Social Media Optimization.
