10 Ways Social Media Can Help Your Business

What if I told you that your product or service could reach millions of people right away? What if you could sell your product right to your target audience in the most cost-effective way and maximize profit? Well, this is possible thanks to the power of social media!

In our world today, social media is such a part of us, it is impossible to shake it off. Most of us spend a lot of our time on our phones, from Instagram to Facebook, to Twitter. Business owners are not taking any chances and many SMEs in Nigeria have scaled through using social media.

Some SMEs in Nigeria would wonder if social media can really help their business. They do not have as much capital as large firms and they wonder if putting money into social media marketing and management is really worth it. How beneficial is this tool called social media? I will tell you that social media can have a tremendously positive effect on your business, but if it’s not held correctly, it could produce a negative effect on a business. Well, that’s not to scare you, knowledge is power and that is what this article is for.

Come with me as we discuss 10 ways social media can help your business. Let’s dive right in!

1.      Social Media Helps Target Your Audience

Social media is a great tool to help you reach your target audience. If you scroll through you your Facebook feed, you will see lots of contents and advertisement, all scrambling for your attention. As a business owner, thorough carefully crafted content, like articles, pictures, and videos, you can speak directly to your target audience and appeal to their specific needs. It is important to have a deep understanding of your target audience, to create content that is both relevant and unique! On the flip side, you must vet the content you are sharing and ensure it is right for your intended audience. The wrong content can generate negative feedback on your business.

2.      Social Media Helps Reduce Costs

Imagine what it will cost to print millions of fliers and a massive billboard that showcases your product? Sounds like a lot. However, through social media Ad campaigns, you can easily advertise your product to your target audience at a very small price. Not only is cost minimized, but it is also an effective way to grow and expand your reach. Through social media, you can carry out market research and monitor your marketing campaign. Social media can also help you recruit the best staff personnel through platforms like LinkedIn. While this is effective, to get the best out of your social media marketing campaign, it is important to know your target audience in other to lure them to your business!

3.      Social Media Helps Create Brand Recognition

For any SME in Nigeria, creating awareness is a major priority! Social media can help you achieve this faster and quicker. People would want to buy from a brand that they know very well. Social media can put your brand right in front of your target audience. As a business owner, it is important to spend time and resources, creating relevant content, posting clear pictures of your logo, posting videos, and cover images. This way you put your brand in the minds of the target audience and lure them right to your business.

4.      Social Media Helps to Increase Leads

Social Media is a great platform to help generate quality leads. A Lead is a prospect or potential customer. How can you achieve this? A great way to begin is by promoting content on social media. Not just any content, but content that is confined within the interests of your target audience! Good promotional content should include good graphics with your brand logo to capture the attention of your audience, high-value content to accurately inform them and a call to action to tell them what to do next.

5.      Social Media Helps Drive Traffic

Businesses use social media to help drive traffic to their website. Having a strong social media presence can increase traffic to your website. How do you generate traffic effectively? You can start by building your social media page, posting relevant content enough to get your followers to click and get to your website, and making your content sharable. However, If you don’t have a strong social media presence or no presence at all, you are losing organically generated traffic and ultimately reducing potential customers.

6.      Social Media Helps You Develop Trust With Your Customers

Social Media is an excellent platform to build trust and brand loyalty. According to research by Social Media Examiner, nearly 79% of marketers agreed that social media is a very effective way to develop loyal followers. One way to do this is by making sure that your content is authentic and engaging for your audience. You can also implore influencers to build brand authority. To make this effective, it is best to use influencers in your niche.

7.      Social Media Helps to Maximize Conversions

The goal of any SME in Nigeria is to make sales. To make sales, you need paying customers! Social media can help turn those leads into paying customers. How can you turn the traffic generated into paying customers? One way to do that is to have a strong Call To Action (CTA). One of the major conversion killers is having too many Call to Actions. Your prospect should not be confused about what to do.  There should be a singular call to action telling the prospect to either click or buy or share, not all three at the same time. Another effective way to do this is to organize giveaways or offer discounts, making your product or service irresistible!

8.      Social Media Helps You Monitor Your Competitors

Social media is a great tool to help you monitor your competitors. You can look at what type of content your competitors are putting up and why they are performing better than you. You can learn the strategies used by your competitors to help your business. You can also use tools to track your competitor’s successes and failures!

9.      Social Media can Help You Track Your Progress

Through social media metrics, you can gain insight into how your business is progressing. You can look at conversion rates, bounce rates, impressions, and hits. It is however important to note that not all metrics are exactly relevant. Impressions, likes, and hits are more superficial. On the other hand, reach, engagement, conversion, activity, and bounce rate are very relevant. As a business owner, you might need the expertise of a social media manager to effectively manage your social media accounts.

10.  Social Media Helps You Stay Relevant

Social Media is a great way to keep your brand in the faces of your audience. This also means that social media can help your business stay relevant. Through engaging with your followers, you can keep your customers abreast of all your business is about every time they log into their social media, which is very often!

Conclusion

Social Media is an effective tool for any business. In today’s world, neglecting social media is a major disadvantage to your business. However, being strategic about how you use social media is a major make or break for your business. Not all contents are relevant to your business. It is important to do your research.

 Inquire, implement, and improve!

Have any questions or comments? Drop them in the comment section below!