9 ways that social media marketing will help your business

By David Ronald

People sometimes ask me about the benefits of social media marketing.

In some instances a small business owner may already have spent time on social media in the hope that new prospects will appear in droves. After a few weeks, however, they scaled back on their social media activities, or abandoned them altogether, after becoming frustrated by an apparent lack of results.

I’ve highlighted the impact of social media marketing on SEO rankings in prior blog posts (for example http://bit.ly/1lW3GC7 and http://bit.ly/1lW3AKI). In this post I’m going to describe other benefits of being active on social media. The key thing to note, however, is that it takes time to build momentum with social media and the benefits aren’t always as obvious as you may like—successful social media marketing requires consistency and patience.

Nonetheless, if you’re feeling a little bit skeptical about the benefits of social media marketing, here are some reasons why it may be working better than you realize.

1. Brand recognition—one of the most powerful ways to use social media is as a brand-building tool. With social media, you get to decide how you want to position your company and what you want people to know about what you do. With consistent effort and great content, you can build a reputation for your brand around your company’s values, benefits, and advantages.

2. Repeat exposure—there is an old marketing adage that says it takes six to eight exposures to a product before a customer decides to buy. A clear benefit of social media is repeat exposure with your network. You have the opportunity to remind them over and over again about what you have to offer, which can shorten your sales cycles dramatically.

3. Authority—for coaches, consultants, authors, speakers, and other service-based businesses, social media can be very powerful in helping you establish authority in your field, making you the go-to resource for your target audience to seek out for help. Share great content, answer questions, and serve your audience, and you will inevitably build loyal fans.

4. Influence—as your following increases, your influence grows. Having a substantial social media audience creates a snowball effect that can attract new customers, media interviews, joint venture partnerships, and all kinds of other opportunities. It’s a bit like when you see a crowd hovered around something. You can’t help but want to see what all the fuss is about, so a large audience will only attract more interest.

5. Community—there is nothing like social media when it comes to cultivating a community. When your followers become part of your community, you gain instant access to them. That means you can find out what challenges they are facing and what they like and don’t like about your offerings. You can engage in ongoing dialog that can be more valuable than any kind of paid market research.

6. Ahead of the curve—whether you realize it or not, your prospects and clients are checking to see if you are engaging in social media. I always find it a bit odd when I’m investigating a potential service provider online and I can’t locate a social media presence or worse, I find Facebook pages that haven’t been updated in months, empty Twitter feeds, and a clear lack of interest in engaging. Social media isn’t a fad and it’s not going away. Even if it’s not your top priority, if you stay current with activity, your prospects will notice.

7. Mindshare with lurkers—although there will be days when you wonder if anyone is paying attention to your social media networks, you can be confident that more people are paying attention that you realize. Give it time and you’ll start to understand what’s happening behind the anonymity of the internet. You even hear from people who say, “I’ve been following you on Twitter for ages. I love your posts!”

8. Competitive advantage—the reality is that most of your competitors aren’t likely doing a very good job with social media (most companies aren’t), which gives you the chance to stand out. Also consider the flip side. If you avoid social media, you leave a big opening that allows your competitors to capture your audience.

9. Website traffic—social media can be a leading traffic generator and when you share blog posts, videos and other content from your website, you give your audience a reason to click through and visit your site. Once there, you have the opportunity to inspire those visitors to take action by inviting them to sign up for your mailing list, make a purchase, or call to schedule a free consultation. Install traffic monitoring service, such as Google Analytics, and if you are committed to your social media efforts, you will clearly see that social media brings traffic. Also, make sure that your visitors receive a clear call to action when they visit your site so that you can convert that extra traffic into business opportunities.

While many businesses large and small are trying to justify the cost and time investment for managing social media marketing, an important benefit often gets overlooked: Big Wins. For example, if a major media outlet finds you on Twitter and interviews you for a national article, then that is also a big win, one that you can’t measure based on directly-generated revenues.

Although big wins don’t happen often, when they do, they make it all worthwhile. It’s easy to forget results like these six months down the road you’re trying to assess whether your social media efforts are paying off. But that one contract you landed could cover your social media marketing costs for years. And that major media interview could lead to subsequent interviews and a line item on your resume that impresses a corporate sponsor three years from now. Never forget to factor in big wins in social media.

Thanks for reading.

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