According to a 2021 study, over 4.20 billion people worldwide use social media and spend 2 hours and 25 minutes a day on social platforms.

And what does this data tell you?

To reach more of your customers, your brand needs to have an active presence on social media. 

This way, you can promote your brand where they spend time and remain at par with competitors in your niche.

But that’s not all you get from social media, and this post details the crucial role it plays in shaping your business.

Let’s get started.

1. Sourcing content

Social media offers you two ways you can source content ideas.

One, ask your followers what they would like to discover more information about. You can run surveys, polls, quizzes, ask them to comment on posts, etc. You can also use social listening tools for this. This way, you can create powerful content your audience enjoys reading and sharing.

The second option involves creating a hashtag or user-generated campaign. If you get followers to post with the hashtag, you can collect a library of posts to share on your accounts over time.

2. Driving inbound traffic

Social media offers brands numerous opportunities to drive traffic to their websites, ecommerce stores, and blogs.

For example, social media ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram enable you to find, target, and reach your audience with ease. In fact, you can run a specific campaign that helps you increase website traffic.

Best of all?

The simple act of posting regularly and consistently can help you drive inbound traffic. If you share links to your blog post or trailers of video content, you can drive audiences to your website to seek more information.

But there’s a catch…

To get audiences to visit your website, you need to publish quality and informative content that drives traffic to your social accounts. Optimize for each platform, include relevant hashtags, and ensure content posted relates to problems your audience needs answers to.

Then direct them to your website, ecommerce store, or landing page to discover more information or to make a purchase.

3. Humanizing your brand

How often do you hold genuine conversations with your audience?

Social media gives you an avenue to interact with your audience and humanize your brand.

And while it’s wise to leverage automation tools that can schedule and publish content, you should not rely on them alone.

Instead, find time to interact with your target audience by replying to their comments and sharing relevant posts from their accounts.

You can also show off behind-the-scenes footage of employees at work, your production process, philanthropic activities, etc.

4. Gauging brand sentimentality

While it’s great to receive lots of tags and mentions on social media, you need to track whether these sentiments are positive or negative.

But why is sentiment analysis necessary?

Running an analysis regularly helps you:

• Understand the feelings your audience has about your brand and their expectations.
• Stay alert and provide immediate responses when customers voice their issues.
• Identify and reach out to those with problems and offer solutions.
• Learn what type of messaging your audience prefers and which products they like.
• Track your competitors, understand which areas you excel in, and what needs improving.
• Spot and solve problems before they turn into a crisis.

5. Offering customer service

Social media provides your business with an avenue to offer customer support services before, during, and after a customer makes a purchase. It enables you to provide guidance, address complaints, and answer questions.

What’s more?

Actively offering good customer services enables you to improve experiences and showcase your ability to fulfil promises.

But how can you offer great customer experiences on social media?

• Reply to feedback, whether good or bad.
• Promptly handle messages and comments.
• Use the customer’s name when interacting and sign off with your name.
• Monitor social media for tags or mentions and reply while conversations are hot.
• Create campaign and branded hashtags that encourage interactions.
• Incorporate helpdesk software that provides answers to frequently asked questions.
• Create a dedicated support account on all social media platforms.
• Be transparent. Tell customers if you have a solution or how long they need to wait for you to resolve problems.
• Avoid arguing with customers online.
• Integrate AI chatbots to help customers make orders, schedule appointments, find your branches, discover products, etc.

6. Helping people discover your offers

Did you know that globally, 45% of internet users use social networks when looking for product and service information?

They do.

It is, therefore, crucial to have an active presence on social media and help users find your brand, products, and services. 

Most importantly, having a social media presence can build your backlinks and improve your search rankings.

For example, Google shows YouTube and Pinterest results for most search terms. In addition, a social media post that receives many shares and comments can drive referral traffic to your webpage. 

7. Generating leads

Social media offers marketers great opportunities to collect leads and find people interested in their offers.

But how can social media help you generate leads?

Start by optimizing your profile on all platforms. Provide contact information, leverage call-to-action buttons, and include a link in your bio.

Secondly, create content with compelling calls-to-action and clickable links. For example, you can use Shoppable Stories on Instagram, tag products in the Instagram Shop, enable customers to Shop the look on Pinterest, etc. 

Thirdly, leverage page builders that create visually seamless, relevant, and easily scannable landing pages. They should be mobile-friendly, have simple forms, A/B testing capabilities, and analytics. This way, you can collect real-time statistics and get insights into how your landing pages can convert better.

Fourth, leverage lead generation ads on Facebook and Instagram, lead Gen Forms on LinkedIn, and YouTube’s Skippable In-Stream ads. Most importantly, find creative ways to generate leads even on other platforms that don’t offer specific lead generation ads.

Ready to benefit from an active social media presence?

With the slow death of traditional marketing strategies like radio and print, social media took over as the leading channel marketers use to promote their products.

And if you don’t leverage it to promote your brand, you lose out on opportunities to boost reach, increase engagement, and grow communities around your brand.

Are you still not convinced why your brand needs an active social media presence? Comment below, and we can offer additional ways social media shapes your business.