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n today’s world, social media plays a huge role in the life of consumers. It is no longer used by the younger generation only, but it is increasingly popular with adults of all ages. It is used to connect, share, communicate and generally keep people in touch with the world around them. However, social media is not just for personal use anymore, it can be a great tool for businesses when used properly.
There are multiple reasons why business should use social media.
Stay in touch with your customer
First, social media allows businesses to easily gather feedback and insights from their customers. By simply maintaining a page on popular social media sites, businesses will get the opinions of their customers and be able to better suit their customers needs and wants. Having this information can give businesses a competitive edge because they know exactly what their customers want.
Build customer loyalty and manage your reputation
In addition to gaining customer insights, social media helps business gain and maintain customer loyalty and manage their reputations. By listening to customers’ concerns and taking action, customers will feel respected and appreciated. Also, in addition to posts about sales and new releases, businesses should include posts about insights into their company and other interesting information. This will make customers feel like they are a part of what’s going on, which will also lead to further loyalty. Also, using social media can help business gauge their customers’ emotions and it gives them a platform on which to dismiss or confirm rumours and further manage their reputations.
Targeted advertising
It’s no secret that social media sites sell highly targeted ads. These sites track the habits of their users and will sell targeted ad spots to businesses – meaning the ad the business pays for is much less likely to be wasted on someone who doesn’t care about the business. Rather, the ad will be delivered to someone who is more likely to use your business based on previous habits. Furthermore, highly targeted ads can lead to more website traffic where customers can learn more about the company and become engaged with it, which will hopefully lead to more dollars spent with the company.
Track and report on your campaigns
One more advantaged to marketing with social media sites is the reporting you can get from it. Most social media sites, when you buy advertising with them (and some even if you don’t buy any advertising with them), will report facts and analytics about the success of your advertising (or the success of your profile/page) such as which ads people are clicking on, how many people are getting directions to your business from the site or ad, how many people are clicking over to your website from the social media site, etc. This type of reporting let’s businesses know what is working and what is not working. Businesses are then able to tweak their marketing and social media habits to cater to their customers.