Everyone is on social media.

Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Walmart, a local pet grooming business in your area, your neighbours, the person who delivers your mail, even your parents!

Whether it’s a small business or a big business, it is important for your business to be on social media and have a social media marketing strategy. There are over 4.2 billion active social media users across the world, and each one of them could be a potential customer, or they could refer a potential customer to your business!

Social media has quickly, and relatively recently, become one of the most important parts of almost everyone’s day in one way or another. How many times have you opened up your Instagram app to see what your friends and favourite brands are talking about today? Or how often do you log in to Youtube (yes, Youtube is social media too!) to learn more about your niche and how you can appeal to them?

Nearly every aspect of our lives, and our businesses, can be improved with the proper use of social media.

So why is it important to have a social media strategy for your business? We’ll give you nine reasons here.

‍Potential to Reach a LOT of People

Like we said, think about your friends, family, acquaintances, your favourite brands, and just about anyone else; they’re all on social media. And with over 4 billion users across various social media platforms, having a presence on social media gives you and your brand the potential to reach a lot of people.

Now, realistically not everyone you reach on social media will become a customer of your brand, but just imagine how many more opportunities your business will have to convert more customers, or even brand advocates, with increased awareness.

Opportunity to Humanise Your Brand

Have you ever called a company and been greeted by a robotic voice recording directing you to “press one to solve this problem”? Yeah, we aren’t big fans of that either, and there’s a high chance your target audience doesn’t like it much either.

Social media gives you the opportunity to humanise your brand with your target audience. To put it simply, your social presence puts a face to the name.

It allows your audience to interact with you through their comments on your posts, and direct messages to you or the social media management agency managing your profile, and it allows you to communicate back with them. No more being restricted to the robot recordings; now they know there’s a real person behind the business, and this can increase their trust in your brand, making them want to stay with you.

You Can Become an Authority in Your Niche

Have you ever wondered why you consider someone an authority in a particular niche? It could be because you have seen them do extraordinary things in that space, or they’ve been in an industry for a long time, or maybe even because they talk about a specific topic in a variety of ways.

Social media allows you to access all three of those!

With a social media presence, you have the opportunity to become an authority in your niche by demonstrating your expertise. You can do this by recording yourself, in a short-form or long-form video, depending on the social media platform, talking about your brand, your products or services, and your industry. And the longer you continue this activity, the more your audience will trust you and believe that you are the go-to person in that field!

The key, however, is to share valuable content with your social media presence. You will build an authoritative presence best when you are discussing the latest trends, newsworthy updates, or innovations you and your business have made in your industry.

Learn About Your Target Audience (source ideas for products or services)

Depending on your social media marketing strategy, you will ideally integrate content that allows you to request and receive feedback from your current and potential customers.

Using things like Q&A, Ask Me Anything, or This or That types of posts, you can begin to learn what your customers like, don’t like, or want more of from your business. Along with that, you may see comments on your product posts saying things like “this is the best drink ever!” or “I wish this one came in lemon flavour…”

Comments like these can be used to create sample products, and potentially determine the next direction for your business to expand into. Your audience is talking about your brand, whether you are on social media or not, so you may as well be there to communicate directly.

Generate Leads For Your Business

Social media is also a great way to generate leads for your business. If you are following an effective social media marketing strategy, and providing valuable content to your target audience, there’s a great chance that they will engage with your brand.

This might be through comments on your posts, or direct messages to your profile. But the more you engage back with them, and prove that your brand is human, responsive, and valuable, the higher that chance that those social media followers will trust your brand with their hard earned dollars.

Continue providing value, and showing your audience that you value them. In return, they will look forward and seek ways to work with you.

Social media also gives you the option to use paid strategies to increase your reach. This can give your business an opportunity to interact with social media users who are not already following your brand or business. This can potentially be a great short term, and long term, strategy.

Support SEO Practices

In one of our recent articles, we talked about search engine optimization and how to increase your website’s organic reach through search engine rankings.

Having a consistent social media presence supports and enhances your businesses SEO practices by giving search engines frequent crumbs and mentions of your brand and business name. It gives these search engines more evidence that your business is providing valuable content to your audience.

Similar to articles and blog posts, the longer your audience engages with your social media content, the more you will be rewarded.

So to summarise why it is important for your business to have a social media marketing strategy:

1. Potential to reach a lot of people
2. Opportunity to humanise your brand
3. You can become an authority in your niche
4. Learn about your target audience
5. Generate leads for your business
6. You can utilise paid social media advertising
7. Build a community with your customers

So if you haven’t already, now is the time to create a social media presence for your business. But remember, just having a profile on Instagram, or jumping on the latest trend on Tik Tok won’t be enough.

As a website and brand support company, Quant By Design is constantly helping brands that are new to social media to optimise their presence on these platforms, especially since they can have a positive effect on search engine optimization for your website too.

Getting started is easy when you have a simple strategy to follow, so if you need social media management services, you can {get in touch with us right here}.

‍