Most businesses and organizations use social media as a way to communicate with customers, build brands, and spread the name of their business. Social media is an effective tool for many companies and businesses. It allows free access to a large amount of people in your company’s target audience, which can be easily found on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Businesses can use this accessible source to communicate with customers by answering questions or concerns they have about products, special offers being provided by a company, or joining in on others conversations taking place on the website.
Social media is a great way for businesses to communicate with their customers, both in-store and online. In this article, we’ll look at how social media can be used as a tool of communication.
What is social media?
Social media is online communication that allows you to interact with your customers and share information in real time. This can help you to reach your customers better, create online networks and sell and promote your products and services. It can be easy to get carried away when using social media for your business. It’s wise to tread carefully and be aware of both the pros and cons before you start.
Benefits of social media for business
Social media can help you engage with your customers and find out what people are saying about your business. You can also use social media for advertising, promotional giveaways and mobile applications.
Social media can help your business to:
- attract customers, get customer feedback and build customer loyalty
- increase your market reach, including international markets
- do market research and reduce marketing costs
- increase revenue by building customer networks and advertising
- develop your brand
- exchange ideas to improve the way you do business
- recruit skilled staff for example through job networking sites like LinkedIn
- increase traffic to your website and improve its search engine ranking
- keep an eye on your competitors.
Disadvantages of social media
Social media may not be suited to every business. If you are unprepared and launch your social media presence without planning, you could waste valuable time and money.
You should be aware that:
- if you don’t have a clear marketing or social media strategy, the benefits may be reduced
- you may need additional resources to manage your online presence
- social media is immediate and needs daily monitoring
- if you don’t actively manage your social media presence, you may not see any real benefits
- you may get unwanted or inappropriate behaviour on your site, including bullying and harassment
- online exposure could attract risks such as negative feedback, information leaks or hacking
- false or misleading claims made on your social media (by your business or a customer) can be subject to consumer law. You could be fined if a customer fan posts misleading or deceptive information, particularly about competitor products or services.
Whatever the risks, having a social media strategy and preparing your policy and procedures carefully beforehand can help you manage them.
The role of social media in business communications
Currently, social media has no competitor when it comes to business communication. Its reach, power and presence are unlike any and this is why brands are utilising a whole boutique of social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.
The future of social media is bright and it’s the perfect place to build conversations with clients and customers so they feel connected to the business. Many companies also answer customer queries through their social accounts and deal with complaints on here. This gives brands the opportunity to project a positive image by showing they care about their consumers, which can help attract more customers and drive more sales.
This is also the perfect place for brands to communicate and collaborate with other brands.
How brands are leveraging social media
Just like any other tool, the true power of social media lies in how it’s being used. Originally just a great means of networking, it now holds substantial value in the business world. Here’s are the main factors behind social media’s domination the game and will continue to do so:
Solid campaigns: Social media campaigns are big news that help the business get noticed. Brands like Dove and Coca Cola use social messages and personal bonds as an effective strategy for their social media.
Being available: Earlier brands projected a larger-than-life image and people had little access to them. Now, they believe in taking a more human approach and being accessible. One of the benefits of social media for business is it allows them to be readily available to customers.
Digital marketing and social media are integrated and are essential elements for a business to grow and sustain itself.
Benefits of social media for brand building
1. Increase brand awareness
With over half of the world’s population using social media, platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter a natural place to reach new and highly targeted potential customers.
Think people only connect with brands they already know on social media? Consider that 83 percent of Instagram users say they discover new products on the platform.
When Stillhouse Spirits ran a Facebook campaign to increase brand awareness among outdoor enthusiasts, the company achieved a 17-point lift in ad recall.
2. Humanize your brand
The ability to create real human connections (a.k.a. Meaningful Relationship Moments) is one of the key benefits of social media for business. Introduce your followers to the people who make up your company and showcase how existing customers are using and benefiting from your products.
Authenticity builds trust. Trust, in turn, builds marketing receptiveness and drives new business. And social is the best place to get real!
Show how you’re embracing your brand values, how your product works in real life, and how you’re putting the interests of your employees and customers first.
3. Establish your brand as a thought leader
The 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer found that while there has been a recent swing towards distrust of government, NGOs and media, business is an institution with a 61 percent level of trust. People are looking to brands for insights and information… and there’s no better place to share that than social media.
No matter what industry your business is in, social media offers the opportunity to establish your brand as a thought leader—the go-to source for information on topics related to your niche.
LinkedIn—particularly the LinkedIn Publishing Platform—is a great network to focus on when aiming to establish your thought leadership.
Hootsuite chairman and co-founder Ryan Holmes has more than 1.7 million followers on LinkedIn, where he shares his insights about social media and entrepreneurship.
4. Stay top of mind
Seventy percent of social media users log into their accounts at least once per day, according to a 2021 study by Pew Research Center, and many people (49 percent!) admit to checking social multiple times per day.
Social media gives you the opportunity to connect with fans and followers every time they log in. Keep your social posts entertaining and informative, and your followers will be glad to see your new content in their feeds, keeping you top of mind so you’re their first stop when they’re ready to make a purchase.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you need to be glued to your accounts 24/7. A scheduling tool like Hootsuite can help you plan your social media content to post well in advance.
Conclusion
Social media is an effective tool for businesses to communicate with customers in a different manner. The tone and the tenor of their communication can be different from traditional media. It does offer reach, but it also builds brand equity, that means customers associate your business more closely with your product or service.