A successful business now requires a strong social media strategy more than ever! Beyond engaging with your audience on even more communication channels, have you ever wondered what the real benefits of social media are for your business?
Customers are online constantly looking for the latest and greatest. They often share their experiences online and look for suggestions from others. Without being present in these conversations, you may be missing out on new business or, worse, losing current customers. But, being present isn’t always enough – you’ll need a killer strategy to cut through all the noise online and to truly see the benefits of social media!
Read on to learn more about social media benefits for business and to see some amazing startups that are succeeding with the help of social media marketing.
In this article, we’ll cover:
How Social Media Benefits Your Business
Below are 5 real world examples of brands engaging with their audiences on various social media platforms and how they managed to reap the benefits of social media.
As you’ll see, there’s a certain amount of wit, humour and tenacity required maximize benefits of social media but the real world results are certainly worth the effort.
1. Brand Awareness
Being active on social media can greatly increase brand awareness among your target market.
Miz Mooz, a startup shoe company, for example, targeted their ideal audience with a clever and comical YouTube video that gained them national recognition, improving their brand awareness significantly.
Miz Mooz created an April Fools video showcasing their “Selfie Shoes”. This creative social media ploy earned them more than 2.7 million views on YouTube and caught the attention of heavy-hitters like Slate Magazine, US Weekly, and USA Today, resulting in mentions from these companies that helped to promote their brand even further!
By entertaining their target market, Miz Mooz made a name for themselves, increasing their brand awareness and kickstarting their startup!
With a simple concept that has your target market in mind, you can use social media to reach mass audiences, going from an unknown startup to a recognized brand. This demonstrates the power of social media and why social media is especially good for startups.
2. Wide Reach
One of the benefits of social media is the wide reach that it provides businesses. Potential customers are everywhere online and the many social media channels available to businesses allows them to reach all types of people!
Single Grain, and their CEO Eric Siu, for example, do a great job of utilizing social media to reach various audiences.
Single Grain is a digital marketing agency that uses a wide variety of social platforms to reach their ideal audience (also known as an omnichannel strategy). They recognize that different people like to consume content on different channels and strive to provide valuable content to their target market on the platform of their choosing.
From YouTube videos to podcasts and Facebook Lives, Single Grain covers all of the bases in order to reach a wide audience of potential customers, and to great success. Single Grain’s YouTube videos can see nearly 50,000 views, their podcast, Growth Everywhere, has more than 109,000 listeners per month and their Facebook videos garner hundreds of views!
While potential clients are everywhere online, they’re not all on just one social media channel. By diversifying your platforms and actively participating on many different channels, you can reach a huge number of potential clients and experience the benefits of social media across all platforms.
Perhaps the strongest benefits of social media lies in its ability to rapidly and effectively target a wide variety of audiences.
3. Increased Engagement
Social media is a great way to increase engagement with your business online. Contests are a particularly awesome way to increase engagement while also getting more followers and increasing sales.
Thinkable Digital did just this. The digital marketing company ran a contest called “Guess the Campaign” where they had entrants guess which popular company was behind a specific social media campaign. Facebook was used as the platform for this contest and Thinkable offered the winner a free social media evaluation from their company.
Contests like this can greatly improve interaction rates on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. By making the informed decision to offer a prize related to their services, Thinkable was able to promote themselves to a potential new client, who, if they were satisfied with the free social media evaluation, may continue using Thinkable’s services.
By running a social media contest like Thinkable Digital, you can greatly improve engagement rates and gain more followers/likes! Remember, the bigger the prize, the greater the incentive to participate.
4. Improvements in SEO
A social media presence may not directly impact SEO however, a definite indirect impact will be seen. Creating high quality content that uses your target keywords can help with your SEO by bringing attention to your social profiles and therefore increasing the traffic coming to your site. This also helps other relevant, high-quality websites to notice you and create links back to your site. These outcomes are what will help you to directly improve your position in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
Dollar Shave Club is an example of a startup company that did an excellent job of creating a buzz on social media which resulted in improvements in SEO.
Dollar Shave Club launched their business with a bang by creating the YouTube video “Our Blades are F***ing Great.”
The video was unlike anything customers in this space had ever seen and was successful in creating a buzz. Continuing with this out-of-the-box content, Dollar Shave Club persisted in sharing fun, unique, entertaining and attention-grabbing content on their social platforms.
As a result, Dollar Shave Club’s video has seen more than 26 million views!
Dollar Shave Club experienced significant SEO benefits through their video.
According to an analysis by Single Grain, Dollar Shave Club earns approximately 300,000 to 1.5 million branded searches per month while top-competitor Gillette receives only 30,300 – 70,800. Dollar Shave Club was found to rank for 29,300 organic keywords and Gillette just 16,200 – all thanks to an outside-the-box, creative and entertaining social media strategy.
Their creative strategy also had an impact on sales – Dollar Shave Club saw $200 million in sales within their first five years and was bought by Unilever for $1 billion!
While this is one of the most successful benefits of social media, even a less significant outcome can have a major impact on SEO and sales for your business.
5. Strong Customer Relationships
Being present on social media platforms and interacting with your customers can also have a significant and positive effect on customer relationships.
MeUndies, for example, has a successful social media marketing strategy that allows them to build strong relationships with their customers – resulting in lifelong sales.
As a clothing startup, MeUndies developed a light and fun social media strategy. Through social media they demonstrate their ideal lifestyle and mission – to create comfortable underwear that everyone can feel good in. They constantly interact with their audience online, showcasing real customers in their posts and conversing and interacting with them on platforms like Instagram. By engaging with their audience, MeUndies has been able to develop customer relationships that ultimately result in sales!
Sharing your idea of the world and your optimal lifestyle, while interacting closely with your audience, can be very successful – increasing sales for your company and creating lifelong customers in the process!
Key Takeaways on Social Media Benefits
The benefits of social media provide a treasure trove of benefits for your company. Today, not having a social media strategy backing your company would be detrimental, especially during the age of digitalization.
Just remember that entertaining, fun, humorous content does well on social media platforms so be sure to keep it light and watch-worthy. Make sure to interact with your audience on a regular basis and constantly tailor your strategy to each platform’s unique needs and wants – this goes a lot farther than you know!
To summarize, some of the top benefits of social media for your business include:
- Improving brand awareness
- Reaching a wide and diverse audience
- Increasing engagement with your company
- Improving SEO
- Building strong relationships with your customers (and potential customers)
Good luck and have fun!
