Social media has claimed its spot in culture and modern everyday living. Similar to that intelligent, frenetic, but likeable character in your favorite streamed show, social has won people over. Consumers and now businesses, see social media as an important vehicle for connecting with others.
For many consumers, social media usage seems to make so much sense. Want to let close friends see pictures of your recent vacation? Share them to Facebook or Instagram. Looking to express disgust about how the weather destroyed your weekend plans. Say it on Twitter. What about that exquisite dish of creamy pasta you just made with a recipe from Pinterest? Don’t take a bite just yet. Snap a photo and post it to your feed. Consumers are used to voicing their opinions, sharing their experiences, and expressing their thoughts on social platforms. Fewer and fewer users feel embarrassment about showing the world a slice of their own lives. With a smartphone handy, it’s hard to see yourself not posting and sharing casually—as a consumer.
But for business, it can be a challenge. Companies can be so busy with day-to-day operations like HR, payroll, and product development that they forget to interact with the customers that follow them on social media. Quite common these days, a company’s social media account turns into a platform for customer service—making little room for brilliant content marketing and corporate messaging.
Some businesses may squeak by for a short while without a presence online, but not for long. If you want to be found, you will need to build an online presence. Building a presence and becoming visible means you’re introducing users (or followers) to your business, your products, and your vision, of course. More importantly, you’ll want to focus on how you can solve your buyer’s problem. If an interested buyer has a question, you can immediately be of value by answering their questions. You can engage that buyer by phone, email, webinar, or on social media.
Your business cannot afford to go without social media. As time moves forward, it will become much more difficult to compete with others in your industry.
Other reasons businesses should grow their online presence with social media:
- draw in the right talent to grow staff size
- build relationships with suppliers
- attract potential funders
Another reason your business can’t survive without social media is because your potential customers are already there. It doesn’t matter if you’re a B2B or B2C company, it’s hard to ignore that the internet has 3.17 billion users. Let’s look at some other social media stats. Facebook reported having 1.71 billion users. Twitter, on the other hand, reports 320 million. Finally, the professional social networking site, LinkedIn, reported having about 450 million users. With these staggering numbers, consider that not all of these users are personal accounts. Users have many reasons for joining these networks which may include: staying in touch with family and friends, news consumption, entertainment, and business. People come to these platforms with hopes of enriching their personal and professional lives.
Social media is expected to keep growing, especially since users are moving from desktops to mobile technology… as well as between devices. More mobile means more usage. More usage means diverse audiences.
By cutting back on your business’ social media activity or worse… not having a social media presence at all, could mean a slow-down of business, then irrelevancy.
Your business has much to gain by going where your potential customers reside… online. Join them. Learn more about them. Be helpful by being attentive and responsive. Make social media an important part of your business survival kit… with an active, healthy social media presence.
Have questions about using social media for business? Connect with me and reach out with questions.
