Apologies for being somewhat hush hush on the old blog front this year. Busy times! I’ve actually been brushing up on a few skills and doing some much needed professional development, which leads to my latest offering. Oh yes; it’s time for all the non-believers to become converts. Each to their own, but ignore at your own peril… 

Is there ever a time when having a social media presence for your business or show is an option? To be honest… not really, and it’s somewhat naive to not utilise these resources. In this day and age, as a business or company, you can’t afford NOT to utilise social media. Here are 13 stellar reasons why using social media is not negotiable.

 13 Reasons Why Using Social Media for Promotion is a Must!

1. It creates social proof.

Consumers are becoming more and more savvy about who and where they purchase products from, and people will take the time to research online before making a purchase. By having a social media presence that is both engaging (and engaged) it helps reassure clients that your business is reputable, and can be trusted.

2. It puts a human face to your brand.

Copying and pasting marketing lingo into social media just doesn’t work. You have less space to do it and the environment is completely different. Social media gives your business the opportunity to reach out and actually connect with your audience. No conservative corporate talk, just real one on one relationships, and discussion.

3. It builds your sphere of influence.

Your sphere of influence is the people in and around your brand that you interact with. There will always be key people of influence – so spend some time getting to know them. Watch and learn how they engage their audience, and then start engaging with them. When you manage to develop a relationship with these key people, it impacts on your sphere of influence and people will see it. This too will help build your credibility online.

4. Your competition is using it.

Your industry (or niche) is represented on Facebook and Twitter. It is. Step up, or step off.

5. Your target audience is using it.

Think of Facebook as a shopping mall where people are living a virtual social life. Being present in this mall is one of the smartest moves you can make for your small business. The old saying goes that, “numbers don’t lie” so here are the official statistics from Facebook about usage.

Statistics:

• 845 million monthly active users at the end of December 2011
• Approximately 80% of monthly active users are outside the U.S. and Canada
• 483 million daily active users (on average) in December 2011
• There are more than 425 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011
• Facebook is available in more than 70 languages

Of course these numbers are for Facebook only and don’t include any of the other social media sites, which have hundreds of millions more of users. What would it mean to your business if you had eight new customers? That is less than one millionth of the percentage of users on Facebook. Yes, there are certain pitfalls you need to ignore when using small business social media marketing… but surely it is worth trying!

6. Google counts social sharing when ranking.

The whole concept of the internet is a web. If you think of a web, there are many layers or paths to a single point. The more paths (called links) to this single point, the more authoritative and stronger the point becomes. When many different people on social media refer to your content, your website, your articles, or your video it means that those individual people find your content useful, entertaining and informative. When this happens, the search engines pay attention and in return use this as a factor to provide better search engine placement for your content.

7. It provides great brand exposure.

If your brand can embrace the nature of social media through providing great content and engaging and interacting with your audience, your brand will get a great boost!

8. It’s the next generation of word of mouth marketing

What better way to interact with new potential clients than via people who have already experienced what your brand has to offer? When your social media presence starts to generate conversation and reactions such as; likes, shares, tweets, pins (or whatever else it maybe then you get their approval), this social recommendation is visible and acts as a gateway for their friends and family to get to know more about your brand.

9. Social media networking sites have high page rankings.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn have high page rankings. This means that, in terms of the search engines like Google and Bing, they carry authority and therefore rank well in search results. Having a well optimised social media profile can help you command search result places, providing more ways for clients to get in contact with you.

10. It provides transparency.

Social media is an open book. If someone likes you then great, everyone can see it! If someone doesn’t like you and mentions something negative about your brand or experience then, it must be noted, that this too is available to the community. Many successful businesses that leverage social media use this as an advantage to show how switched on they are by replying and finding a resolution and closing that loop. This shows, to the watching community, that your business has integrity and values interaction, criticism and debate… and more importantly knows how to deal with it.

11. It creates conversation.

The users of your brand, or experience, are the best people to learn from when it comes to making things better. By invoking questions about the usability of your experience you will get an understanding as to what clients are looking for. You will also be able to gauge how to improve things.  Social media for small business success is truly about listening, as opposed to marketing. Conversations act like a magnet; when one starts people prick up their ears and take notice. This can have a knock on effect where more and more people jump into the conversation. This could help to get your content, and brand, spread wide and far.

12. Aids customer service.

Many businesses face the same questions time and time again when it comes to customer service. Utilise your social media outlets to answer those questions! By doing it this way you can highlight to your community that you are available, but it also allows other people within the community to provide answers and support to new members who have perhaps experienced the same issues themselves.

13. Brand exposure.

Everybody wants to expose their brand to a larger audience. The more targeted people who are aware of your brand, the greater the chance you have of turning those into audience members, paying clients and brand advocates.

So therefore, it’s not hard to see that using social media for business today is as important as learning how to use email for business 15 years ago!  We need to embrace social media; both the possibilities it brings and the challenges it presents. We need to do this in order to remain profitable and, most importantly, relevant in an ever increasing social world.

**Adapted from an article on http://www.socialmediatoday.com