Advantages of social media marketing

Advantages of Social Media Marketing for Your Business

Audience Engagement

Imagine spending as little as 6 hours a week in order to increase your business's recognition, traffic, and
sales with little to no cost. That's right! About 90% of marketers claimed that social media generated
immense exposure for their company, and that's only one of its many advantages. Social networks are
now a substantial part of every marketing strategy, and the benefits of using social media are so great
that anyone not implementing this cost-effective resource is missing out on a phenomenal marketing
opportunity. It's easy to see that social media marketing is a key element for success in marketing and
many marketers realize the potential for business growth using the platform. However, some of these
professionals are unsure of which tactics to apply and if they are effective. According to Social Media
Examiner, about 96% of marketers are currently participating in social media marketing, but 85% of
participants aren't sure which tools are the best to use. With our help, we will diminish the confusion by
thoroughly explaining the advantages of using social media to market your business.

Increased Brand Awareness.

Social media is one of the most cost-efficient digital marketing methods used to syndicate content and
increase your business' visibility. Implementing a social media strategy will greatly increase your brand
recognition since you will be engaging with a broad audience of consumers. To get started, create social
media profiles for your business and begin interacting with others. Get employees, business partners,
and sponsors to "like" and "share" your page. Simply having people interact with your content will
increase brand awareness and begin building your reputation as a business. Each post that is shared will
be introduced to a new network of individuals, which can lead them to becoming potential customers,
and the more people who know about your business, the better. By investing only a few hours per week,
over 91% of marketers claimed that their social marketing efforts greatly increased their exposure.
There is no doubt that by simply having a social media page your brand will benefit, and with regular use
it can generate a wide audience for your business.

More Inbound Traffic.

Without marketing your business on social media, your inbound traffic is limited to your usual
customers. The people familiar with your brand are likely searching for the same keywords you already
rank for. Without utilizing social media as part of your marketing strategy, you'll have much more
difficulty reaching anyone outside of your loyal customer circle. Every social media profile you add to
your marketing mix is a gateway to your website, and every piece of content you post is another
opportunity to acquire a new customer. Social media is a melting pot of different types of people with
varying backgrounds and behaviors. With different people come different needs and different ways of
thinking. Syndicating your content on as many platforms as possible allows these individuals to
organically reach your business. For instance, perhaps someone in an older demographic of consumers
will search for your website using a particular keyword on Facebook, but a millennial could begin their
search by using a different social media platform entirely, because they search for products totally
differently. By marketing on social media you can effectively open your business to a wider variety of
versatile consumers all over the world.
Improved Search Engine Rankings.

Although posting on social media might get your business some site traffic, more effort than that is
required to see significant success. Search engine optimization is very important for achieving higher
page rankings and obtaining traffic to your business website. While social media doesn't directly
increase search engine rankings, Social Media Examiner states that more than 58% of marketers who
have been using social media for one year or longer still see improved search engine rankings. Being
able to rank in the top positions for your keywords will revolutionize your traffic and continue to
generate positive results for your business. Let's face it, everyone uses Google to find information, and
they likely won't navigate past page 1 because their answer normally is on the first page of results. If
your business website isn't ranked towards the top of search engine results, you should probably adjust
your search engine optimization strategy. To give yourself the best chance of ranking better through
social media, create high quality content that integrates your targeted keywords. Content such as blogs,
infographics, case studies, business information, and employee photos will make your business's social
media profile intriguing and credible. Once you begin posting quality content, you'll begin to build a
social media community where followers will "like" and "share" your content. Most importantly, it gives
you more opportunities to get in front of industry influencers who will write about your business and
provide links back - which will help to directly increase search engine rankings.

Higher Conversion Rates.

With increased visibility, your business gains more opportunities for conversion. Every blog post, image,
video, or comment may lead viewers to your company's website and increase traffic. Social media
marketing allows your business to give a positive impression through a humanization factor. When
brands are interactive by sharing content, commenting, and posting statuses on social media, it
personifies a brand. People prefer to do business with other people, rather than companies. Over 51%
of marketers claimed that taking the time to develop relationships with consumers showed positive
results in sales. The better impression you make on a visitor, the more likely they are to think of your
business when the need for your product or services arises. Studies have also shown that social media
has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing. When a brand is interactive online,
consumers who follow your brand's accounts often begin to more completely trust the credibility of
your business. People use social media platforms to stay connected to their friends, family, and
communities. Since people are already talking, why not throw your brand into the mix? More likely than
not, they'll mention your brand to a friend when your products or services are needed, overall providing
your business with social proof of its quality. As reported by Social Media Examiner, about 66% of
marketers saw lead generation benefits by using social media platforms at least 6 hours per week.
Putting your brand in an atmosphere where people are sharing, liking, and talking, can only improve the
conversion rates on your existing traffic.

Better Customer Satisfaction.

Social media is a networking and communication platform. Creating a voice for your company through
these platforms is important in humanizing your company. Customers appreciate knowing that when
they post comments on your pages, they will receive a personalized response rather than an automated
message. Being able to acknowledge each comment shows that you are attentive of your visitors' needs
and aim to provide the best experience.
Every customer interaction on your business's social media accounts is an opportunity to publicly
demonstrate your compassion for your customers. Whether an individual has a question or a complaint,
social media allows you to address the matter using interpersonal dialogue. A brand devoted to
customer satisfaction that takes the time to compose personal messages will inherently be viewed in a
positive light, even if responding to a customer complaint.

Improved Brand Loyalty.

One of the main goals of almost all businesses is developing a loyal customer base. Considering that
customer satisfaction and brand loyalty typically go hand in hand, it is important to regularly engage
with consumers and begin developing a bond with them. Social media is not just limited to introducing
your brand's products and promotional campaigns. Customers see these platforms as a service channel
where they can communicate directly with the business. The millennial generation is known for being
the most brand loyal customers of all. Born between the early 1980's and the early 2000's, millennials
are the largest generation in US history -- and will soon completely consume the market. Studies show
that this segment of customers is 62% more loyal to brands that directly engage with them on social
media. Since these technology natives require communication with their brands, businesses must
implement social media marketing to get the attention of their most influential consumers.

More Brand Authority.

Customer satisfaction and brand loyalty both play a part in making your business more authoritative, but
it all comes down to communication. When consumers see your company posting on social media,
especially replying to customers and posting original content, it makes you appear more credible.
Regularly interacting with customers demonstrates that your business cares about customer
satisfaction, and is available to answer any questions that they might have. Satisfied customers are
eager to spread the word about a great product or service and they usually turn to social media to
express their opinion. Having customers mention your business on social media will advertise your
business, and show new visitors your value and brand authority. Once you obtain a few satisfied
customers who are vocal about their positive purchase experience, you can let the advertising be done
for you by actual customers who enjoyed your product or service.

Cost-Effective.

Social media marketing is possibly the most cost-efficient part of an advertising strategy. Signing up and
creating a profile is free for almost all social networking platforms, and any paid promotions you decide
to invest in are a relatively low cost compared to other marketing tactics. Being cost-effective is such an
advantage because you can see a greater return on investment and retain a bigger budget for other
marketing and business expenses. If you decide to use paid advertising on social media, always start
small to see what you should expect. As you become more comfortable, fine tune your strategy and try
increasing your budget. Just by spending a small amount of time and money you can significantly
increase your conversion rates and eventually get return on investment on the money you initially
invested.

Gain Marketplace Insights.

One of the most valuable advantages of social media is marketplace insight. What better way to know
the thoughts and needs of your consumers than by directly talking to them? By monitoring the activity
on your profiles,, you can see customer' interests and opinions that you might not otherwise be aware
of if your business didn't have a social media presence. Using social media as a complementary research
tool can help gain information that will aid you in understanding your industry. Once you gain a large
following, you can use additional tools to analyze the demographics of your consumers. Another
insightful aspect of social media marketing is the ability to segment your content syndication lists based
on topic, and identify which types of content generate the most impressions. These tools give you the
ability to measure conversions based on posts on various social media platforms to find the perfect
combination for generating revenue

Thought Leadership.

Posting insightful and well-written content on your social media is a great way to become an expert and
leader in your field. There is no one way to become a thought leader - it requires work that can be
supported by online networking tools. To establish yourself as an expert, be sure to utilize social media
platforms and build your presence. Be communicative, connect with your audience, share content, and
promote your authority. When your social media campaign is aligned with other marketing efforts, your
skills will be highlighted and followers will look up to you. Being able to directly connect with your
customers creates a relationship that they will value, allowing you to become a notable influencer in
your field.

Disadvantages of social media marketing

Not Built For Businesses.
This is the main disadvantage of social media marketing for business. Many businesses, especially the
new ones, which do not have enough awareness or reputation are extremely not advised to focus on
social media marketing.

Even if the well-reputed business does not invest much in social media marketing in general.

This is all mainly because what the core purpose of what social media is. In my opinion, social media are
built for connecting two or more people in a “relaxed fashion”.

Relaxed fashion here means, for example, chatting with friends, liking photos, following people,
watching funny videos, etc , just what you do with social media in day to day life.

True, social media like Facebook or Instagram are now supporting business promotion but you cannot
forget what the core purpose they are built for and that people’s preferences and choices will still
remain the same.

For example, if you want to buy certain products online, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
– either Google or e-commerce platform like Amazon right? Now I think you start to understand it now.

There’s simply no ‘buying-intent’ when people use social media.

Negative Feedback And Tarnish Brand Name
Being on social media means exposing yourself publicly to all kinds of people who may or may not have
the intention of coming across or seeing your brand.

You and I both know there is always a dark side to everything, and social media is no exception.

With the internet being easily accessible more than ever before, there are people who always aim to
damage one’s reputation.

If your business is unknown or just starting to gain momentum, the chances are of getting an attack are
more likely.

Because it’s so easy to comment or engage, anyone can easily write negative comments on your
business

Bad things can spread out through social media and you know how quickly things are.

Heavily Rely On Ads.

Ads, Ads, Ads everywhere! I know you are frustrated at ads, me too. In today’s online marketing, ads
dominate.

Social media companies are very aware of that too. Facebook ads announcement was a revolution.

With its ability to target specific audiences based on various parameters in-depth, it’s what makes it
such a powerful tool to generate leads online. (Disadvantage for small business)

Advertisement is the main channel for these giants to make money on their platform. That’s why they
really focus on promoting and luring people to use their ads platform.

As far as I have seen, Facebook’s organic reach is almost dead in 2019. Instagram, well you could get
some reach through hashtags but you will most likely get those people who sell some likes or followers
to follow you.

This is one of the biggest disadvantages of social media for your business.

Unless you pump in loads of money, which is not recommended if your business is still new or trying the
market.

Low ROI.
Another main negative of social media for business. ROI from social media marketing is probably one of
the lowest in online marketing strategies. You have to put both time, effort and money to really make
things work.

If you are a social media geek, you should know this very well. If you do not post or engage with your
fans or people on a regular basis, what you notice is your followers will start decreasing.
In social networks, only the die-hard fans stay. And if your brand or business is not well aware of a
particular group of people or locations, no one is really going to be your true die-hard fans, trust me.

So it’s really time-consuming to actually create that kind of audience unless you are well known.

That is why what you should be doing before starting social media marketing is to establish a certain
reputation and awareness about your brand and business.

This way, you do not have to chase around people or increase followers by going and mass following
people.

Time-Consuming to the users.

One big misconception people have about social media is that: It’s FREE.

There are several free or low-cost social media tools available, but you have to deploy a substantial
amount of time to understand and learn the usage.

Time is not absolutely free.

Companies who have implemented social media activities on their marketing strategies successfully
understand how much time it takes to learn and implement all of them.

Need to Stay engaged and active.

Speaking about time-consuming, with social media marketing, you need to always stay engage, monitor
and active your marketing effort.

Social media is constantly changing and if you’re not up-to-date, you’re going to fall behind the others.

Any qualified personnel knows that to succeed in any social media marketing strategy, you need to
spend both time and money in order to get the most out of it.

For example, have you ever wondered why you lose Instagram followers when you don’t post after a
week or two? That’s the reason.

People on social media are always looking for new and fresh things. As a marketer, that’s your job to
provide them.

Difficult to measure efforts put in.

Measuring your marketing effort on social media is just more difficult and complicated than it sounds.

This particular con of social media marketing is what many business owners will have to face.

At one point, you’ve got likes, comments, retweets and followers all over the place, at another point,
you simply can’t pinpoint exactly whether these aspects really matter for your effort.

The engagement and interactions are just all over the place and with this, you can’t definitely be sure
about your brand awareness strategies.
Security and privacy policy issues.
One of the biggest negatives of social media marketing is the security and privacy-related issues.

When you’re using social media platforms for advertising, you basically need to surrender your
information, both public and personal, in order to get the most out of your marketing effort.

With social media platforms being a constant target for hackers or unethical people, your information
and data will never be safe.

Take a look at the latest Facebook data breach news, millions and millions of data have been leaked and
with this, you’re risking your business in the hands of unreliable platforms.

True, social platforms are constantly improving on this, but they will never be 100% safe.

Limited Only To Social Media Platforms.

When you do social media marketing, you’re essentially using social media platforms like Facebook,
LinkedIn, Instagram or Twitter to market and build brand awareness.

But this is only limited to social media. Unlike other marketing channels like SEO or SEM, where you can
expand your marketing effort to various places, thus being more flexible, social media marketing only
stays on social media.

Another disadvantage here is that different platforms require different strategies. This basically a
wastage of time effort and money.

Doesn’t work for all group of People.

You cannot target all people groups with your social media marketing efforts. This is because a different
group of people uses social media differently. In fact, some groups may not even be present on social
media.

This is the reason why for any online marketing strategies, you need to do research for your target
audiences.

Even that, a different group of people are active on different platforms. For instance, Instagram is more
famous among female teens whereas Facebook is used more by elderly people

These podcast websites not only help you promote your business but also they link out to your site as
well. This way, you get the SEO advantage as well as traffic as a referral.

The above processes take time but they are really worth it. Once you have created enough awareness
and reputation, then it’s time to hop to social media marketing.

By now, people must have started knowing about your business and its reputation. Generating
audiences from this point is pretty easy and the cool part is, you do not have to chase around for your
audiences. They will come to you.

Conclusion.
That’s all for the disadvantages of social media marketing for business. That is doesn’t work to all
people, limited on social media plat forms among others.

In my opinion, social media is a tool that is used as a follow up to any brand, people or organizations.

And the advice (From above point) which I gave to the person who sells shoes on the Instagram store is
to get a website.

Like I explained t, one is to make the website as a central point of your business. Focus on it and the rest
is optional.

Social-Media Marketing Strategies for Companies.

Businesses worldwide have shifted focus to gathering customers on their social media platforms rather
than their websites..

Social media is crucial to the success of any company's digital marketing strategy. Despite this, brands of
all kinds and sizes are not using this tool to its full potential. Although the number of "follows", "likes"
and "shares" is still important, the credibility of a brand is distinguished by far more than just this.
Today, social media requires a unique set of skills whereby brands need to fully understand the needs of
their audience. To help you out, I've put together 10 social media strategies you need to implement this
year, whether you are a young entrepreneur or a well-established brand.

They use chatbots in marketing.

You may have already heard, but chatbots are in. This comes as no surprise as they are the one digital
tool that can communicate and resolve problems for your customers without the potential need for any
human interruption. In addition to the above, chatbots integrate with the platforms that consumers now
feel most comfortable interacting through: social media. Platforms such as Chattypeople make
integrating an AI-powered chatbot into social media strategy easy. These tools allow to create a chatbot
that:

 Doesn't require any coding knowledge.

 Can answer customer questions.

 Is able to take orders directly from Facebook Messenger and comments.

 Integrates with all the major payment systems.

The Create a personalized experience for their customers.

Chatbots are not only a great way to automate certain everyday tasks, and if implemented properly,
your chatbot will allow you to create more personalized experiences for your customers. To do this, stop
linking your advertisements solely to your landing pages, and create ads that redirect your audience to a
Messenger window with your chatbot. Linking ads to your chatbot;

 Break the traditional views customers have of them only trying to sell to them.

 Making customer's experience more personal.

  Boosting sales.

 Create a loyal fan base.

Create an efficient content marketing strategy.

Quality is key and content is no exception. Content marketing has been a prominent form of marketing
for a long time and this is not set to change anytime soon. Many brands are not linking quality content
with the right posting schedule and the correct frequency of posts. High-quality content coupled with all
the above will help bring in the right customers at the right time. Aside from its ability to attract an
organic audience, a good content marketing strategy can be implemented for free. The marketers
therefore create a relevant hashtag strategy along with your optimized and thorough content.

Create a community for your audience.

Although "followers" and the many other metrics are important, they are not the "be all and end all" to
social media success. This helps to show audience that they are not just robots. Integrate personality
through humor and emotions into posts so that audience can relate to their brand. Social media is all
about being social, and if customers see the same types of posts time and time again, they may lose
interest. In this they Make communications interactive by:

 Asking audience questions.

 Gathering their opinions on certain matters.

 Sharing newsworthy information rather than just information about products or services.

 Liking and sharing some of their posts rather than just the other way around.

 Asking them to interact directly with your posts through "likes" and "shares".

Jazz up profiles with a diverse content strategy.

People respond to good imagery, fun videos, and some interesting podcasts once and awhile. Jazz up
your content by using this type of media regularly. Social media pages will look bland if all posted and
shared is texted, so they use other types of media to catch audience’s eye. This is also a great way to
add a level of personality to their brand.

Use brand advocates.

Their best promotional tool is the people who love their brand. Instead of focusing all efforts on finding
new customers, why not leverage current ones? In addition to current customers, use your own
employees. To use your employees as brand advocates, you should:

 Create social media guidelines specific to your brand.

 Tell your advocates about social media best practices.

 Add a leader to each section of social media advocacy plan.

 Track the correct data to pinpoint areas for improvement and those that are doing well.

Create profiles on the relevant channels.

Today, people create profiles on every social media channel available with the aim of reaching as many
people as possible. Unfortunately, with that mindset, you will not reach your chosen target audience. As
a result, it is key to look at your buyer personas when choosing your social media channels. For example,
you won't necessarily need a LinkedIn profile if you are launching a gothic clothing brand; the same as
you won't need to be on Pinterest to promote your surveillance services.

Establish a social media budget.

Social media platforms are one of, if not the most important, forms of marketing. Allocating the right
budget to your social media endeavors is crucial to your success. Not only will this, leveraging that
budget with the right strategy be the most cost-effective way for you to reach your chosen target
audience. Because social media is used on a much more personal level, you will also find that it is a place
where you can make a much deeper connection with your customers.

Run cross-channel campaigns.

To further engage your customers, run cross-channel campaigns across all your social media channels.
Keep in mind that these campaigns are run by virtually every company today, so you will need to give
yourself an edge to help you stand out from the crowd. Add an emotional component to your social
media campaigns so that your audience can relate to your cause. An efficient cross-channel social media
campaign will:

 Tell an engaging story.

 Link back to a specific landing page that will give audience more information about their
campaign.

 Have a unique and memorable name coupled with relevant hashtags.

Tell a story by going live.

They share with audience what's happening with company in real time? Facebook and Instagram,
among other platforms, have created their own live streaming features, something that is not yet being
used to its full potential by big brands. To compete with them, start using these live features before they
really catch on. Live stories are a great way to:

Businesses worldwide are slowly becoming more preoccupied with gathering customers on their social
media platforms rather than their websites. By following the 10 strategies outlined above, many
marketers have not only set themselves up to compete with well-established brands but also create a
social media plan that will withstand the test of time.