How Using Social Media Can Help Businesses Stay Ahead of the Competition By James Tredwell on April 1, 2020 At this point, ignoring social Media is like pulling out a flip phone in a business meeting and not understanding, ‘Why Simon gets all the new accounts?’ But the sad part is, most people still own flip phones, and some people always ask, ‘What can social media marketing do for my business?’ May GOD help these innocent, or should I say, ignorant souls. Do you realize that 90% of marketers believe that social media has increased their business presence more than anything else? (As per hubspot.com) If you are still not convinced, then know that 66% of the marketers who spend at least 6 hours per week on social media get more leads than those who don’t use social media at all. So, in a way, the more social media you use, the more leads you will get. Here is how Social Media is helping businesses to get more leads than their competitors. 1. Social Media is a source of massive traffic It doesn’t matter which industry you belong to or what is your target audience, a substantial amount of traffic and leads can be generated with social media. Having access to unlimited customers across the globe helps a brand to get massive traffic on their website. Whenever a new blog or an update is made on the homepage, it’s nearly impossible for all the customers to know about it. Inevitably, some of them will notice, but for the rest, you need to use social media to grab their attention and bring them on your site. And when these posts are shown in the newsfeed of visitors and followers that are already interested in your product, the generated traffic will be highly targeted. It will not just boost traffic; it will attract the customers you need. Generating traffic from social media is a science. At times a single Reddit link might drive 20,000 visitors; other times, social media scheduling tools can help you to bring unexpected traffic on site. It would be crazy not to capitalize on such an opportunity. 2. Social Media will give an idea about your audience The most fantastic part of Social Media is the amount of interaction they bring to the table. People nowadays share everything on their social media. Say, you want to know more about your target audience, read their tweets, or see what they are sharing on Instagram. You’ll get surprising insights about their daily lives. What are their hobbies? What websites do they visit regularly? Which products they’re buying and why? Which type of posts do they love to share? These insights have phenomenal benefits. When you’re able to understand your customers, it will be easy to create relevant content and create ads that will grab the attention of these people. You can identify the pain points of customers and improve your product strategy. 3. Social Media Develops Brand Loyalty A report by Texas Tech University revealed that brands that are active on social media have more loyal customers than those who are not. Of course, it doesn’t take a mind of a genius to understand this simple fact that when brands interact on social media, they build rapport and a bond od trust. By giving out useful information to the customer, it’s easy to ask customers to subscribe or try out a new service. This shows that one of the benefits of social media is that it brings brand loyalty. Customers will see your brand as a caring and value-driven brand. And in a competitive market, this can make a huge difference. 4. Social Media will increase your sales The most logical reason that businesses use social media is that it brings more sales According to Statista.com, with more than 2.5 Billion active monthly users, Facebook is a first-generation beast. More and more CEOs and VPs use social media to make their buying decision. It’s not a surprise that when you are in front of the customer, it will develop a level of trust, and an increase in social media presence will make it easy for the customer to buy from you. You have the chance to influence the customer on multiple points of the sales funnel. You can engage customers through social media, give them exclusive discount coupons, and address their pain points directly via social media. 5. Boosting your website’s SEO Search engine crawlers are smart, they exactly know which of the pages are driving the most traffic, so they ignore the rest of the pages. Inevitably, a killer content strategy is essential to increase your ranking, but driving traffic will help you to climb the ladder faster. At times, it will only take re-sharing the evergreen content. When you keep sharing the accessible content on social media, it will bring more people to your website, and there is a good chance that your SEO will improve fast. Talk from a standpoint of an SEO agency, where you are handling a dozen of projects, it is crucial to devise a content strategy for your clients’ that is best aligned with their goals. If the things look challenging to handle, you can always outsource SEO to the one that keep nitty-gritty details into account. Finishing it up There is fierce competition out there. If you don’t act smart and beat your competitors, it will be severe for you to survive. There is no room for more words and less action. You need to get out there and listen to what customers want? And the good thing about social media is that people genuinely share their problems on social media, which makes it easy for brands to capture their questions and devise a viable solution for them. It’s not a question of choice anymore. If you are not on social media, you’ll be left behind, forgotten, and no one will come to your rescue. To make those customers listen to your brand message, you must become part of their tribe. To go where they hand out, that is social media. You need to be active on social media and let the customers know that you are there to solve their problems, to add value to their lives. Author Bio :- Mary Warner is an enthusiast blogger. Her compelling research and communication capabilities exchange offerings that have value for the reader. Her passion for writing has been an ever-evolving affair. She loves to share her views related to latest trends in marketing, technology, ecommerce, and the like.