Why Your Business Needs Social Media

Nowadays having a website isn't enough. People use social media to go and find what they need. According to Newsroom stats, there are more than one billion people active on Facebook and more than 100 million people who use Instagram every month.
Here are our top 8 reasons that will show you why your business needs social media.

1. Increase brand awareness

Social media is an excellent way to communicate your brand, introduce it to your potential customers and keep everyone informed about what's going on in your business. Just like an e-mail signature is your business card, your social media accounts are your face. Through these platforms, you can engage with your customers, attract new clients and keep open communication with them.

2. Target your audience

Social media revolutionised the way we target our audience, allowing us to show the right content to the right audience. You are in complete control! You can have a campaign that solely targets women aged between 25-35 with an affinity towards travelling and shopping.

3. Expand your audience

Social media allows you to reach new people and this is excellent to expand your audience. Entertaining and interesting content helps you increase your reach and engagement, allowing you to appear on the newsfeed of potential clients. Therefore, it is essential to think about what content your audience are more likely to engage with and that is relevant to them.

4. See results

One of the advantages of adopting a social media strategy is that you can see the numbers, analyse them and get a clear understanding of how your brand is performing. These insights range from a general overview of how many likes or retweets a particular post has, to more in-depth understanding of who your followers are, how many people you are reaching, how many are reacting to what you are sharing, how many new followers you are gaining from particular posts, and how your budget is being spent. Such insight gives you an upper hand by understanding where your brand is lacking, what can be improved and what is certainly working.

5. Improve customer support

Social media has improved customer support for many businesses, simply because it has become easier for customers to talk directly to their brands. Many brands have been using platforms like Facebook and Twitter to improve their customer support. Apple launched Apple Support on Twitter to be able to share tips with their followers and provide customer support. Make sure to be active on all your social media accounts and to respond to your customer requests in a timely manner.

6. Increase traffic to your website

"Content is fire, social media is gasoline." Jay Bear.
Very often businesses struggle with website traffic and this is where social media comes to help. Thanks to the number of people you can reach by simply sharing an article to Facebook or Twitter, the chances that you website traffic increase are high. The traffic can vary according to how engaging and interesting the content on your website is, so make sure to have a good content strategy on top of your social media one in order to achieve great results.
Always keep in mind that epic content results in excellent engagement on social media which will then result in great traffic on the website.

7. Cost effective

With social media, you pay for what you get and this allows you to see exactly what you've gained from the money spent (such as how many people saw your ad, how many have engaged, and how many have now become new followers). Ultimately creating an account is free, and managing a page can be relatively easy if you have a strategy in mind. On top of that, it is entirely up to you how much budget you wish to allocate. Of course, it all depends on what your goals are, and the more you spend the more you get - but the good news is that you don't need to have an outrageous budget in order to succeed on social media, as little as €20 is enough to reach a wider audience.

8. Makes your brand human

Social media gives a face to the business, allows people to see the values of the brand and shows what's happening inside the company. People love to see behind the scenes, office photos, and anything which involves humans, it is, therefore, important for your business to show who are the people that are making it go forward, who are the faces behind those posts, adverts etc. Instagram is the perfect platform to do this, as you can share images taken inside the office, at events, or during a project - you need to remember that whatever you are doing is targeted towards humans, so showing the human side of the business is always a good idea.

That being said, social media is another avenue for your brand. It serves as a double function, that of creating an open communication with your customers through content and to launch advertising campaigns with specific marketing objectives. While a social media strategy should never be an afterthought it isn't the only avenue that your business should leverage. Other advertising channels and areas of communication must be part of your communication strategy just like advertising on Yellow. Being that Yellow is an online and offline directory for businesses, with curated information and a powerful local search when customers are ready to buy, it is another method of showcasing your brand and, therefore, you must make it known to your customers that there are multiple facets to your business.