Knowing the Impact of Social Media on Business is Increasingly Important in the Digital Age
Prior to social media, businesses relied on traditional advertising methods and live events to help find targeted prospects. Social media has disrupted conventional marketing techniques, allowing startups to easily reach their target audiences. Social media platforms help you connect with your customers, boost brand awareness, and increase your leads and sales. The impact of social media on business is something that cannot be ignored in successful business strategies, especially as startups face labor shortage, customer retention, and employee satisfaction.
Benefits of Social Media for Business
Connect with Your Audience Directly
Social media has transformed the status quo for businesses in every industry. By changing the way businesses communicate with their audiences, startups are able to get in front of their target audiences quickly and virtually.
Social media has given startups the chance to replace their business cards, which often end up in the trash, by appearing in their target audience’s feed. Social media allows you to provide value to your customers upfront, without asking for anything in return.
It’s important to recognize that social media allows businesses to connect with their customers. SMM reported that over 65% of businesses are on social media to increase leads. Sharing your existing customer’s posts creates space for additional interactions, increasing brand loyalty and awareness.
Brand Building and Establishing Credibility
If someone is researching your business prior to making a purchase, one of the first places they’ll check is your social media accounts. Potential customers can also see your startup’s engagement, which increases your business’s credibility.
Social media is one of the most profitable digital marketing platforms when it comes to boosting your brand’s visibility. By applying a social media strategy to your startup, you can significantly increase brand recognition.
Gaining Customer Perspective
Whether you’ve recently launched a new product or are looking for information on an existing service, it’s important to know how people perceive your business’s offerings. How are people using your product? Is it missing any important features? Is the price fair? Looking at your customer’s social media posts can provide valuable insights to many of these questions.
Disadvantages of Social Media for Business
The impact of social media on business has been proven time and time again– and while social media comes with a number of perks, it’s important to recognize the risks that come with popular platforms.
All Press Isn’t Good Press
While social media is a great way to build brand awareness, make sure that it’s for the right reasons. All press isn’t necessarily good for business, which is why your business must be respectful of its audience before clicking the post button to avoid damaging your reputation.
Negative Reviews and Interactions
It’s not uncommon for businesses to find complaints from people who haven’t had any experience with them. While it’s important to address legitimate complaints, remain vigilant and don’t fall victim to bots or scammers.
Account Hackers
Your business is constantly subject to online scrutiny, which is why you need to make sure that your accounts are protected. If a hacker is compromising the integrity of your product or service, it can lead to mistrust from your customers. Although security breaches are a very real threat, startups can safeguard against cyber invasions by keeping their passwords updated and performing social media risk assessments to help spot any flaws in their security systems.
How to Use Social Media for the Success of Your Business
Once you’ve set up accounts on all relevant social media platforms, it’s time to maintain a consistent posting schedule. Try testing a mix of media, including written posts, photos, and videos. Creating a comprehensive plan will help you keep up with your competition, and allows you to fully gain the benefits of the impact of social media on business.
Make sure that your social media accounts are promoting genuine interactions. Visual content gets noticed easily, so strive to always share good quality graphics to make your content more appealing. It’s also important to ensure that you’re providing your followers with humanized interactions, not bots or automated content.
Being personal with your followers encourages them to connect with your startup. Give them the opportunity to ask questions, spark conversations, and tag you in their posts. These interactions keep you in the mind of your market, which translates to better customer retention.
The Best Tools for Social Media Monitoring
Fenix Verify offers a Social Media Monitoring tool to help you keep up with your brand on social media. Startups can easily monitor social media posts across all platforms for brand visibility and response. By gaining access to helpful insights such as rating distributions, social scores, and recent reviews, you’ll be able to implement a social media strategy that works. Fenix Verify organizes ratings by source, so you can dedicate your efforts to the social media platforms that resonate with your target audience.
In addition to our Social Media Monitoring tool, you can improve your startup by completing a brand audit, implementing digital checklists, and measuring both customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction rates.
Check out our website to see our full selection of social media monitoring tools and schedule a free demo to implement lasting strategies for your startup today.
