For practices wanting to attract more customers, increase sales and grow their business, it’s important to hop on the social media bandwagon and harness its full potential. Now more than ever, people are plugged into their phones around the clock, and they’re often browsing through their various social media feeds.
Social media is a great tool for businesses and if done right, it’s the perfect way to grow your business without paying a cent!
THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media is widely used by businesses across the globe. It helps them gain new customers as well as advertise and interact with potential and existing customers. It’s an easy way to put your business out there without having to invest any money in it. Here are some reasons why it’s important to prioritize social media as a tool to help your business:
1. Finding your business
Today, social media is an efficient way to be seen online outside of websites. It allows potential customers to understand who are, where to find you, what you’re selling, and how to contact you. This is important because the accuracy of this information can make-or-break a potential sale opportunity for your business.
2. Target audience
Advertising on Facebook or Instagram has a huge competitive advantage over Google or Bing Ads. The answer for this is simple: audience identity.[i] When users create a social media account, they are adding their personal information such as age, gender, their likes or dislikes, location, etc. Social media is a massive collector of personal information, and businesses are meant to use this data to showcase their ads at their best advantage, catering directly to their ideal audience.[ii]
Social media can find your target audience and figure out its demographics so that they can target ads and content directly to them. This will create visibility for your brand in the right place, track your results and measure your company’s ROI.
3. Increase business
From a business point of view, setting up a social media account delivers you the ultimate goal of growing your business in multiple ways.
8 Ways to Use Social Media to Increase Business:
- Increase brand awareness
- Attract more customers
- Promote your products and services
- Increase foot-traffic in store
- Sell your products and services
- Interact and engage with customers
- Build a loyal online network
- Reach a wider audience
For these benefits and more, it’s an easy choice to set up a social media account for your business.
BOOSTING VISIBILITY THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA
Today, it is rare for businesses not to have a social media account. However, having an account and managing it are very different. In order to gain and maintain the interest of your followers, it’s important to invest your time in managing your account in order to get the most of social media. More importantly, it’s important to understand that social media is not a fad. It is here to stay and will find ways to grow and evolve.
Practices that have yet to adopt social media curation into its business model, now is the time to reconsider. Bearing in mind the billions of users who have their own social media accounts, it’s easy to see why businesses are putting together their own social media marketing strategies to target a wider range of audiences to grow their business. For example, Facebook has over 2.2 billion users, YouTube has 1.5 billion users, Google+ has 111 million users, and Instagram has 1 billion users.[iii]
And it’s not just the younger generation who are using social media. Those between 55 and 64 are 2x more likely to engage with branded content than someone 28 or younger.[iv]
Companies who are active on social media are able to get news and information out to their audience quickly with the click of a button. Social media is a quick and easy tool to send a message out to the public and let them know why they should come shop with you.
Here are a few tips on how to build and maintain a successful social media presence to drive business your way:
- Posting consistently following a strict schedule
- Having variety in what you post
- Knowing your audience and catering to them
- Replying to comments and engaging with followers
- Following and liking other profiles
- Sharing the latest news and promotions
As a practice, if you want to let the public know who you are and why they should stop by at your clinic, social media is a great tool to lay out this information in an engaging manner.
Social media is here to stay and it’s up to businesses to figure how they will adapt. We’re here to help you stay on top of your social media game plan and help you navigate the various platforms with easy step-by-step tutorials and tips and tricks to get you going. Stay tuned for more!
[i] https://www.whitesharkmedia.com/blog/social-media/social-media-advertising-facts/
[ii] https://www.whitesharkmedia.com/blog/social-media/social-media-advertising-facts/
[iii] https://www.graygroupintl.com/blog/social-media-101-understanding-the-basics
[iv] https://www.graygroupintl.com/blog/social-media-101-understanding-the-basics
