Over the past 10 years with the meteoric rise of Facebook and then more recently Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest you and your business can't afford to not have a social presence. Social media as a medium is gigantic and we've all heard of some of it's biggest success stories, for example Justin Bieber or Gangnam Style to name just a few of the highest profile. Most brands already are on some form of social media or the other, but if you’re not then here’s why you NEED to be.
Your competitors are already using social media
If you do some simple competitor analysis for your company, I'd bet that most if not all of your competitors are already on social media. But I'd guarantee that the market leader in your niche is. Why would you want to hinder yourself and your company by being on uneven ground?
Your target audience are on Social media
Your competetitors aren't the only ones already on social media, so are your potential clients, lots and lots of them, infact, millions and millions worldwide. What better way of pushing your product or services to the masses than openly to hundreds of millions of active monthly users across different social media networks. Once your brand is online you can start connecting with everyone, and you should. People often feel that having an online presence makes your company more accessible and also credible, especially when you spend the time connecting one on one with your customers. It adds another personal touch to your service and, the conversations you do have can be used to improve your service. It's as much about taking feedback as it is marketing.
Social media is word of mouth marketing, but much much bigger
Likes, tweets, shares, pins and +1s are all seals of approval. Just like someone telling their friend that you exist and more importantly are great, so do these social interactions. Traditionally word of mouth is one person telling one person, who themselves may tell one person, but, sharing online anyone following the sharer can see the recommendation and then they can share with all of their own followers and so on. The potential for exposure from just one recommendation/share is staggering.
Google and other search engines take social into account when ranking
When you put your content out on social media and then it gets shared it's creating more ways back to your business. As part of Google's algorythm it looks at the number of back links to your site, the more you have the better. When people are sharing your links it means that they have found it informative, useful or even funny. Essentially when your high on Google's ranking it means your an authority on the subject. That's where you want to be. So you must use social media to your advantage. Another way to do just that is to optimise your profile pages. A well optimised page will have high exposure when searching because it will be piggy backing off of the social networking sites already high ranking.
You can see from the few reasons above it's almost impossible to argue against adopting social media for your business. The world has embraced it, so should you! Don't believe me? Take a look at the number of registered users for a select few social networks:
Facebook: 1+ Billion
Google+: 1+ Billion
Tencent QQ: 784+ Million
Twitter: 500+ Million
LinkedIn: 225+ Million
Instagram: 100+ Million
If you haven't already, it really is time to embrace social media for business. You can start by following us on Facebook and Twitter!
