Is Social Media Really That Important for Your Business?

When entre­pre­neurs talk about dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, there are a cou­ple of recur­ring terms like “bounce rate,” “SEO,” “SERP,” social pres­ence, and oth­ers that are thrown around pret­ty fre­quent­ly. For most busi­ness own­ers who entered the dig­i­tal realm, the terms are part of the lex­i­con now.

How­ev­er, some entre­pre­neurs aren’t real­ly aware that their dig­i­tal foot­print is more than just rows of met­rics, charts, and graphs gen­er­at­ed on an inter­net plat­form. These num­bers often show­case more than just an online pres­ence. Most often than not, they rep­re­sent a poten­tial for rev­enue and prof­it oppor­tu­ni­ties and often sig­nal dif­fer­ent areas where there’s a need for improve­ment, bud­get relo­ca­tion, and more.

When you take a clos­er look at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, you can see a clear rela­tion­ship between social media and busi­ness, which is a great exam­ple of how focus­ing sole­ly on met­rics can some­times be a bit deceiving.

You can often hear that social media helps a busi­ness grow, pos­i­tive­ly influ­ences brand recog­ni­tion, helps com­mu­ni­cate brand val­ue, gives busi­ness own­ers a way to engage with their cus­tomers and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to under­stand them better.

Even then, this ques­tion begs to be answered: Why is social media impor­tant for your busi­ness? Can social media accounts for busi­ness influ­ence your tar­get audi­ence to make a pur­chase from you online or to actu­al­ly set foot in your premis­es? Do these plat­forms real­ly play such a vital role in help­ing your dig­i­tal ecosystem? 

Social Media in Business

It shouldn’t be a sur­prise that a lot of us use social media. Near­ly half of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion has at least one account. And giv­en the sit­u­a­tion regard­ing COVID19 and all relat­ed restric­tions and social dis­tanc­ing, cre­at­ing a social chan­nel for your busi­ness is a log­i­cal step.

How­ev­er, before we’d go any fur­ther, let’s take one step back and define social media. Basi­cal­ly, it’s any form of inter­ac­tive online media that requires a pro­file. Apart from the obvi­ous options like Face­book, Twit­ter, and Insta­gram, some experts will also define a blog’s com­ment sec­tion as social media and oth­er pro­file forms, like a pod­cast page or a YouTube channel. 

When it comes to social media in busi­ness, entre­pre­neurs will often put con­sid­er­able effort (and resources) into social media as it can help boost aware­ness of their prod­ucts, ser­vices, and brand. 

The only prob­lem is, they aren’t doing things the most opti­mal way, which can lead to a social bud­get with a measly ROI and fruit­less social campaigns.

Social Media Helps Businesses. But How?

Social media isn’t rock­et sci­ence, but mas­ter­ing the ins and outs of these chan­nels does take time and patience. Also, many busi­ness own­ers sim­ply don’t have the time to fol­low the lat­est trends, under­stand the lat­est algo­rithms, and learn about the impor­tance of appro­pri­ate hashtagging.

The social land­scape is filled with dif­fer­ent strate­gies, jar­gon, and com­plex process­es. If you don’t know the intri­ca­cies sur­round­ing social strate­gies, mar­ket­ing, and con­tent, your social media accounts can waste resources instead of gen­er­at­ing rev­enue and profit.

To evade this prob­lem, many CEOs look for either in-house social teams, free­lancers, or dig­i­tal agen­cies to out­source these tasks. Even then, if busi­ness own­ers lack the basic knowl­edge of the social inner work­ings, they prob­a­bly still won’t get the best bang for their buck. 

Social Media and Business: Get the Most Out of Your Online Presence

Here are a hand­ful of tips entre­pre­neurs often over­look when cre­at­ing a social strategy.

Be Patient

First and fore­most, busi­ness own­ers who decide to delve into the world of social media need to under­stand that build­ing a large fol­low­ing and a sol­id social pres­ence takes time. It’s still “media,” and it has to reach the audience.

Give Value

Entre­pre­neurs should nev­er for­get the social aspect of social media. The most ded­i­cat­ed busi­ness own­ers who want to mas­ter social own­ers will often spend hours research­ing case stud­ies, look­ing at ad charts, exam­ples, algo­rithms, and data­bas­es to cre­ate content.

The prob­lem with that con­tent is that it’s often not cre­at­ed with the ide­al client, with the tar­get audi­ence in mind. They often fail to cre­ate con­tent that enables social media to help their busi­ness. Some­thing that holds val­ue to the user, some­thing they engage with. When they do that, they will be able to build a more mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship with a brand, which can be eas­i­ly turned into sales/subscriptions, etc.

Have Clear Intentions

Get­ting the most out of your social media accounts for busi­ness gets a lot eas­i­er when you have clear inten­tions. Often, entre­pre­neurs will want one thing out of their social chan­nels: make the met­rics go up. While that makes per­fect sense, it’s still not a clear intention.

Tak­ing your time and mak­ing a list of what you want from your social chan­nels can go a long way in help­ing your busi­ness grow.

You need clear goals. Do you want to boost your sales? Increase traf­fic to your web­site? Do you want more likes on your posts? Sim­ply put, there’s no one-size-fits-all social cam­paign and approach. Com­ing up with the appro­pri­ate strate­gies to help you achieve your inten­tions can improve your business’s rev­enue and profit.

Be Involved

“Why is social media impor­tant for your busi­ness?” – is also a ques­tion some entre­pre­neurs will ask who don’t quite under­stand how social media helps a busi­ness strive. Some­times, when you task your employ­ees with social tasks, they will find it dif­fi­cult to trans­late your brand’s mes­sage into the appro­pri­ate social media for­mat. They might also have prob­lems with show­cas­ing your prod­ucts and ser­vices in the best pos­si­ble light. 

If they’re strug­gling with cre­at­ing prop­er con­tent, how can they help you improve your social met­rics and improve your ROI? In order to get the most out of your social strate­gies, you, too, need to be involved in them.

On that end, hir­ing a pro­fes­sion­al dig­i­tal agency can make things a lot easier.

Understand Each Channel

Social media accounts for busi­ness can be great, no doubt about that. How­ev­er, not all plat­forms are equal­ly great. The con­tent you push on Insta­gram will prob­a­bly dif­fer from your posts on Insta­gram and TikTok.

Every social chan­nel has its own strengths and weak­ness­es, and the con­tent you push should only play on every platform’s strengths. This way, you can ensure that your audi­ences will engage with your posts no mat­ter which channel.

Be in for the Long Haul

Remem­ber, the first thing we men­tioned for improv­ing your social pres­ence was patience, right? Those peo­ple who don’t under­stand why social media is cru­cial for online suc­cess are among those who more or less just “give it a go,” and nev­er put in the required con­sis­tent work.

To estab­lish your­self as a strong brand on social media, you have to be ded­i­cat­ed. Post­ing reg­u­lar­ly, engag­ing with your audi­ence reg­u­lar­ly, and mak­ing an effort to reach out to your fol­low­ers will help you build trust, cred­i­bil­i­ty, and social proof. All this can trans­late into bet­ter con­ver­sions, improved lead gen­er­a­tion, and ulti­mate­ly, more sales.

Focus On Metrics That Matter

Often, entre­pre­neurs don’t quite under­stand which met­rics they should real­ly focus on. Hav­ing thou­sands of fol­low­ers is one thing, but if your posts have only a cou­ple of likes, you know some­thing sim­ply isn’t work­ing. You can’t trick algo­rithms, and if they deem that your con­tent isn’t worth pro­mot­ing, it will favor oth­er mate­r­i­al on social platforms. 

Stay away from van­i­ty met­rics. Fake views on YouTube may look impres­sive, but often­times, they will just only drag down aver­age watch-time, which will tell YouTube that the con­tent isn’t real­ly worth watching. 

Social Media IS Important

Your social chan­nels are vital parts of your dig­i­tal ecosys­tem, great­ly influ­enc­ing brand recog­ni­tion, rep­u­ta­tion, and how peo­ple per­ceive your busi­ness online. Social plat­forms are excel­lent play­grounds where you can express your brand’s vision, where you can show­case what kind of val­ue you can offer your poten­tial buy­ers, and where you can engage with them, learn from them, and more. If set up right, your social chan­nels can also help improve traf­fic toward your site and help you with your on-site conversions.

How­ev­er, under­stand­ing the intri­cate process­es that go into craft­ing and imple­ment­ing a social strat­e­gy can be time-con­sum­ing and may take away too much of a busi­ness owner’s time.

This Is Where the Experts Come In

You don’t have to focus on your own. Hir­ing a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency with a proven track record can go a long way in help­ing your social chan­nels pros­per. This will enable you to grow your busi­ness while you can take more time to focus on oth­er aspects of your busi­ness. Hir­ing us to take care of your social chan­nels will ensure you get the most out of your cam­paigns and strate­gies. We will work togeth­er with you to under­stand your vision and cre­ate con­tent that your audi­ence will val­ue and engage with.