Social media can be an important tool for local and international businesses, with millions of people around the world accessing websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and Linkedin on a daily basis. We are engulfed with information and advertising, and have access to a wide range of professional networks for both social and professional purposes.
If you would like to understand how social media can contribute to the growth of a company and brand, read this article as we look at some of the main benefits of using social media for business.
Learn about your target audience
One of the keys to success for businesses is to identify and get to know more about their audience. There are several important aspects businesses can use to learn about potential clients/customers.
Gathering the right information is essential for building and implementing successful campaigns, and knowing what users’ personal interests are, which websites they use, and how they use and interact on social media, can really help to target the right people and to grow a business.
Many social network websites like Facebook also have some useful business tools, too. For example, there is a business analysis page called “Facebook Insights”, where it is possible to learn about the best time of the day to post, track users’ interaction and see what type of content is most popular.
This information can be used to create a successful social media strategy.
Social media management can allow you to reach a targeted audience efficiently
Once enough information has been gathered to put together a strategy, it is possible to create an advertising campaign via social media platforms to target a new audience. And not only will this help to increase the business’s potential reach, it is also possible to target posts to specific people according to their age, location and language, for example.
This is also a great advantage for global businesses who can localise their content and advertising campaigns into multiple languages and make the most of the geo-targeted posts. In addition, there are online social media management tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer, which allow you to execute campaigns across multiple channels as well as in different languages.
Instant access to customer perspective and feedback
Feedback can be positive or negative – both of which can give valuable insights. Positive feedback can be used to provide a reference or testimony to existing users and also to see what might attract new customers. Negative feedback, on the other hand, can point out where internal processes need to be fixed or improved in order to achieve customer satisfaction, and to successfully attract new customers.
Negative feedback can also be used to improve future campaigns or it can be responded to and through excellent customer services with an engaging and positive online presence, problems can be remedied. And social media can provide businesses with a gateway to keep ongoing contact with local or international audiences. Reassurance can certainly increase a business’s credibility. And even if customers tend to voice their dissatisfaction more often than their satisfaction about a product or service, companies cannot afford to ignore their customers’ opinions. Social media is an open door to create a meaningful relationship with customers.
Getting it right on search ranking and increasing website traffic
Appealing and interesting posts on social media can help to direct customers to your website or improve your brand. There are many ways this can be achieved, for example on Pinterest it is possible to link images directly to a company’s website, and on Facebook and Twitter posts can contain links that will lead the audience to the company’s webpage.
Another benefit of using social media is that businesses can also increase their rank on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Having a high number of inbound links to your website from reputable websites and also social media pages is known to improve search result listings on global search engines. This is debatable, though, since search engines rely on a number of factors to display their search results.
However, many marketers believe that links to a website via social media do have an impact. This is why having a well thought-out social media strategy should not be dismissed, given that if it does help search engine rankings and you don’t use social media, you might be giving competitor companies the upper hand.
Even if social media websites do or do not help your website to score on search listings, social media profiles certainly do have an impact on whether your search results are in the top results for brands. And some social media websites like Twitter and Facebook are now developing their websites to resemble well established search engines, allowing the user to search popular topics, news and also companies by categories.
There are plenty of benefits to using social media for business. If you are planning to create or use your social media channels in multiple languages, please give us a call today on +44 (0)207294 7710 or e-mail us at info@creativetranslation.com and we will be happy to help you achieve your goals.