Internet Marketing for Older Adults

5 Reasons Your Online Business Needs Social Media

Marketing online continues to evolve and grow and these days social media takes a front seat in most online marketing strategies as supports the growth of business. The reasons to use social platforms to engage and reach customers are plentiful; here are 5 of the main ones.

Reason #1 – Reach

Why do social media managers spend countless hours planning, posting, testing, and perfecting their social media presence online?

  • There are 3 billion active Internet users and 2.1 billion of them have social media accounts.
  • YouTube has more than 1 billion users, more than a 1/3 of all web users. Each and every day web visitors view hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube that generate billions of views.
  • Facebook has nearly 1.4 billion users, that’s 47% of all Internet users. 4.5 billion Likes are generated daily and nearly 75% of Facebook’s revenue comes from mobile advertising. 936 million Facebook users login in at least once daily and 52% of marketers found a customer on Facebook in 2013.
  • Twitter has 316 million monthly active users that 500 million tweets each day
  • Google+ has 363 million users that hit the +1 button on 5 billion times per day
  • Pinterest has 100 million users, 85% of which are women. 47% of Pinterest users purchase a product based on pins, with the average sale being $58.95. 67% of pinned content is from a business site and 82% of Pinterest users would rather follow a brand than a celebrity.
Impressed yet?

These stats are just one reason to use social media to market your business that really illustrate the reach that social media can have on your business, be it online and brick and mortar. Here are 4 more reasons to make social media a part of your marketing plan.

Reason #2 – Building Relationships

Social media allows you to reach people at a more personal level. Many social media marketing experts explain that social media is about relationships building, that as a side effect brings about conversions for calls to action. When you connect with people and they connect with you, they are more likely to follow your brand and all it has to offer.

Reason #3 – Show Off Your Best Content

Social media allows you to show off your best content, and highlight all your brand has to offer. Whether you use text, images, video, or all of the above, you can tailor your campaign to present and impress your target audience with the very best content, products, and services that your brand has to offer. Tailoring your campaign through social media allows you to meet many objectives, including, building brand reputation, customer engagement, a better customer experience through valuable information and any other goals that meet your marketing needs.

Reason #4 – Steady and Reliable Traffic

Who isn’t sick of fighting for organic traffic when Google keeps wiping sites off their SERPS with one after another of their ongoing updates? Social media can bring a steady, long term, reliable and ongoing stream of traffic to your sites and blogs, without having to worry that some entity will come along and wipe you out.

Reason #5 – Control

One of the greatest benefits of social media is that you have full control of what is presented about your company, brand, and website to your target audience. You can tailor your marketing plan to meet specific goals and not leave anything to chance. The multitude of tracking, and testing tools available, such as, Klout, SumAll, BuzzSumo, and TweetReach, just to name a few allow you to enhance and tweak your campaigns as needed to constantly improve your efforts to boost conversions.

Bottom Line

There is no better time than now to take advantage of all social media has to offer. If you have an online business and do not have a social media presence then you are behind the times, it’s really as simple as that.

There are many expert guides online to get you started, and educating yourself on the intricate process that is social media marketing is critical to your overall success.

There is also the option of hiring a social media marketing expert. And, take care to choose a competent professional. It will not be cheap, but may well be worth it when they bring the results your business needs to succeed.