5 Benefits and Importance of Social Media in Business

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Even though lots of businesses are already using social media to market their products and services and are making huge sales, the idea of social media marketing for business still sounds strange to many CEOs. These CEOs wonder, “Why use social media for business?” They think social media are only meant for online chitchats, and that there is no importance of social media in business.

The truth is that this belief is not accurate as there are lots of benefits for using social media for business. To show to these CEOs wondering “Why to use social media for business?” that their business will gain a lot from social media, we have come up with the various benefits and importance of social media in business.

Please take the time to go through the five benefits and importance of social media in business.

1. Create the Needed Awareness about the Business

People only buy products and services they are aware of, and since almost everybody is on one social network or the other, the platforms are the best place to increase awareness about a business. It takes less than 20 minutes to create social media pages for your business and start creating awareness about your products and services.

Awareness about a business on social media comes when your followers engage with the posts you share. As you share posts regularly, followers would start liking, commenting, sharing (retweeting) the posts. These help your posts to reach more people. The more the people your posts reach, the more the awareness about your brand, products and services.

On social media, the easiest way to boost awareness is by attracting the right followership- people interested in your products and services, and by sharing helpful posts that contain images.

2. Increase Traffic to Website

It is not unusual for businesses to share the link to their latest blog posts on their social media accounts. When done well, sharing blog posts on social media – especially on Facebook – can drastically increase the traffic to a business website. This is because the followers are already familiar with the social media account and are ready to read what the business has to say in its blog posts.

The fact that social media help increase traffic to a website is a strong point that no businessperson should ignore if he or she is looking to increase inbound traffic from other sources aside from search engines.

To take advantage of this importance of social media in business, ensure you share your blog posts at the peak time your social media followers are online. Also, ensure you add a captivating caption to the link to the posts; this would encourage people to click on the link.

3. Increase Conversion Rates

This benefit is related to the first-two benefits and importance of importance of social media in business stated above. Social media help to convert ordinary followers to leads – and leads to paying customers. When people follow a social media page, it means they love what the page is all about; therefore, when products and services are promoted on the page, they are likely to be interested – and could likely buy.

A follower that likes a product image on Instagram is likely to buy the product if she needs it and can afford it.

4. Augment SEO Efforts and Make It Easy to Find a Business on Google

Though Google has stated that it does look at “social signal” when ranking websites, experience has shown that social media indirectly impact Google’s ranking. Posts with lots of shares on social media rank high on Google, just as it is true that posts ranking high on Google have lots of shares on social media. Obviously, there is an interrelationship.

Another benefit of social media in business that’s related to SEO and Google is that social media make it easy for a business to be found on search engines. Most businesses that don’t have a website (or those that have a website but not optimised for search engines) have their social media accounts dominating the front page of Google when the brand’s name is searched for.

This makes it easy for people to see and interact with such businesses on Google, even if the website of the businesses is nowhere to be found.

5. Cheap and Effective Advertisement

Out of all the benefits and importance of social media in business stated in this post, the fact that social media advertising is cheap and effective – and you can measure ROI – is why most businesses are adopting social media. Unlike the traditional advertisement on billboard, newspaper, radio, and TV, which are very expensive for small and medium-sized businesses, social media advertising is relatively cheap.

In fact, with ₦1,000 only, you can run a Facebook and/or Instagram advertising campaign. Aside from that, social media advertisement allows targeting the right audience that is interested in a product and service. Campaigns can also be monitored and tracked – and adjusted – on the go to amplify what’s working and change what’s not.

Other Benefits and Importance of Social Media in Business

There are a lot of benefits businesses can derive from using social media; so not all has been stated above. Other benefits your business can gain from social media include but not limited to:

Customer Service and Satisfaction
Consumer Behaviour Analysis and Marketplace Insights
Enhance Brand Loyalty
Thought Leadership
And more

From all the benefits and importance that have been discussed above, you should now be convinced that social media are very important for your business. Therefore, you should take a bold step and register your business on social media and start sharing engaging posts with your brand’s followers.