Sam Walton the founder of Walmart once said “If you have questions, go to the store. Your customers have the answers.”
Global business is facing one of the least expected challenges due to the pandemic. Along with it, the people leading the business are intertwined in the never-ending customer and stakeholder empowerment and involvement.
For millennia, power has rested on the world wide web where any resource under the sun is within a click. With the advancement of technology, mankind has ventured into new spheres where they have limitless opportunities in all fields from education to science.
The business has completely upgraded its way of marketing, they are now riding the digital era. The traditional way businesses interacted with their potential customers is long gone. Gone is the time when door-to-door sales existed now everything takes place in the digital realm.
Within a fleet of time businesses adopted marketing digitally, thanks to the pandemic what was supposed to happen 10 years later happened in a span of 2 years. Businesses started providing their services digitally. Social media became a great tool for it.
Why Businesses should say yes to Social Media Marketing?
Social media is helping millions around the world to facilitate their ideas and share information they have on even the tiniest thing. When people connect to share their experiences on social media platforms, they are creating a safe place for other customers.
This helps to reduce marketplace exploitation. Businesses are turning to social media to promote their services and create awareness about their brand or services.
Social media marketing can be defined as a form of digital marketing that mainly uses social media platforms to promote a particular business’s product or services. Using popular social media networks, a business can achieve its branding and marketing goals.
Social media marketing doesn’t exactly mean you can start a social media account and start posting random photos and videos. It requires strategies and measurable goals.
Which is the most effective social media platform for businesses?
Now that you know how exactly social media marketing helps to grow your business it is time to put this knowledge into action. An effective social media marketing plan can be your roadmap to success.
According to statistics, Facebook is the most used social media platform around the world with 2.91 billion monthly users. YouTube comes next on the list with 2.56 billion users followed by WhatsApp and Instagram.
Choosing the right social media platform works like a charm. It is not necessary that Facebook will help you to grow your business just because it is leading there is a chance Instagram would be the one helping you to achieve your business goals and the reason behind this is simple, it all depends on your brand.
Among the total population of the earth 2.91 billion users use Facebook on monthly basis. Facebook is considered to be the largest social media site with around 200 million small business owners that use Facebook tools. 7 million advertisers use this platform to promote their products and services.
Facebook is the right social media platform to create a presence in social media. Facebook provides its users with a wide variety of features. Some of the most common tools used by Facebook users are Facebook polls, Facebook stories, Facebook Ads, Facebook messenger Q&A sessions, and more. Facebook is the most effective marketing tool out there.
YOUTUBE
YouTube is the second-largest social media site with around 2.5 billion monthly users. YouTube is considered the second largest search engine after google. YouTube is a video-sharing platform where users can upload any videos without any time limit.
YouTubers upload makeup tutorials, gadget reviews, recipes, etc. So, YouTube is the best social media site to use if want to promote video marketing. You can start your own YouTube channel and use it to promote your brand’s products or services. Advertising on YouTube can increase your reach.
WhatsApp is a messaging app used by 2.2 billion people on a monthly basis. Initially, WhatsApp was used as a messaging app that kept everyone connected to each other but gradually it became a platform for business.
WhatsApp later came up with the WhatsApp Business app for small business owners and WhatsApp Business API for business enterprises. WhatsApp’s business platform helps in providing customer support and lets customers be updated about their purchases. As the topmost messaging app WhatsApp can be a great platform for customer service.
Instagram and WhatsApp have strong competition on who is leading because their monthly users are of the same amount. Instagram is more of a visual platform that can be used to showcase your brand’s photos and videos.
Instagram allows you to share a wide range of content such as stories, reels, live videos, and IGTV if you want to share a longer form of video. Instagram allow allows you to build an Instagram business profile which helps you to interact with potential customers. Thanks to Instagram influencer marketing is now the talk of the town.
How to choose the right social media platforms?
Choose social media platforms depending on what your brand is about. Choose content that is diverse, and avoid sticking to the same content, though there is an option to repurpose your content for instance you can use a customer review as a Facebook post similarly you can turn your blog post into a series of tweets.
Try to make use of all features that are available on the social media platform like polls, questions, and so on. If you are not confident enough to do these tasks yourself, you can approach social media agencies. Social media agencies help you to achieve your business goals through paid advertising or through content production on various social media platforms. Be selective with your social media presence.
Key Takeaways:
- Be consistent while posting whether it is on Instagram or Facebook, try to post consistently. Schedule your posts, if possible, as most social media have features that help you schedule a post.
- While posting photos or videos it is advisable to post content that is relatable to your brand. The content should represent your brand’s product or services and should help you to attract potential customers.
- Social media marketing helps to monitor your brand’s reputation. Creating a social media account not only helps you to create an online presence but help you to assess what people think about your brand using social listening tools and so on.
- It is important to stay connected with your customers online or not. Through social media marketing, you are connected with your online community. Engaging with influencers and customers will help you build a community around your brand.
- Social media marketing helps you get feedback. Feedback is the most important element of any business. In social media, you can answer your customer’s queries, reply to comments, and so on. Positive feedback helps you identify your strong points whereas negative feedback helps you to identify the pain points of your business.
- Social media marketing helps you to drive traffic to your website through blog posts. Higher the number of visitors higher the chance you have of converting them to customers. It also helps you to generate leads.
