From year to year, the number of active users of social media is constantly growing. According to the DIGITAL 2022 report, this increase is 10% higher than in the previous 2021. This number represents as much as 58.4 percent of the world's total population. Thanks to the growing importance of social media, more and more business and profit-making activities are transferred to their levels. But why is this the case? What are the benefits of social media for the company?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Why does social media play an important role in running a business?
- Reach, i.e. building brand awareness through social media
- Building a dedicated brand community
- Direct feedback from customers
2. Which social media will be the best?
- Facebook as the main communication channel between the brand and the customer
- Instagram, meaning maximum photos and minimum content
- Through video to the heart, i.e. creating content on YouTube
- Twitter - a place for the brand to talk to the customer
- TikTok, or fast and large numbers
- Pinterest, which is a huge potential for interesting ads
- LinkedIn as a showcase for the company
Why does social media play an important role in running a business?
The world of social media opens the way to promotion for businesses. Most social media platforms already offer their business services to businesses. Keeping company profiles can affect the pace of your company's development, its awareness and, above all, sales. We especially introduce you to the three most important reasons why you should run social media.
Reach, i.e. building brand awareness through social media
Social media are carriers for creating a brand image in the Internet space. Thanks to them, the company has the opportunity to reach the largest possible audience and gain new potential customers. Social media easily allows you to expose your brand to completely new people. Currently, the most popular are two methods of promotion in social media. You can do it for free, i.e. by commenting, reacting or sharing content on your platforms. However, it should be remembered that free advertising in social media is usually not sufficient and satisfactory, especially when we are just starting to operate in this world. Cost-free running of company profiles is usually a rarity. Social media platforms already offer tools and various forms of advertising, adapted to the promotion on the business side. Paid ads allow you to easily gain new followers, promote a brand or increase its awareness in the eyes of other users. They are the most popular form of brand promotion in the Internet world. They have a real impact on the conversion and traffic on company websites and translate into profits achieved in the future.
Building a dedicated brand community
Social media provides an amazing platform for building lasting relationships with brand audiences. Thanks to their easy availability, users have constant insight into the activities undertaken by the company and can constantly follow its activities. Through them, a real, loyal bond is created between the customer and the brand. Consistent running of corporate social media leads to the creation of a community around the brand, i.e. a community that will be involved in the life of the company, will be more willing to use its services or buy its products, will recommend it and promote it among people around it (the so-called word of mouth marketing). Building a brand community is more and more important when running a business because it ultimately leads to real sales benefits.
Direct feedback from customers
Feedback from the company's customers is essential. It gives us the opportunity to improve the quality of our services or products. Social media becomes an intermediary between the brand and the brand's recipient. Customers convey their emotions related to the brand through likes, displays or shares on social networks. They have the ability to add comments and opinions. They can react in different ways to brand posts. Social media becomes a platform thanks to which the brand receives clear information about its services or products in real time. Due to the immediate feedback, the company has the ability to quickly improve the quality of its services or products.
Which social media will work best?
There are plenty of social media platforms on the internet. But this does not mean that the brand should have an account on each of them and keep them actively. Depending on your business, completely different platforms will work better. Below we present the most important social media that should be taken into account when conducting communication of your brand on the Internet.
Facebook as the main communication channel between the brand and the customer
It is an application that is very often the first contact and the main channel of communication between the brand and the brand's recipient. Contact between the customer and the brand should be easy and pleasant, because communication on Facebook often influences the perception of the brand in the eyes of users. If a brand cares about a good image and building a solid and active community, this application is the core of the communication strategy. Maintaining a Facebook profile has a huge impact on gaining the trust of potential and regular customers. Through the Facebook profile, the company can escalate its truthfulness and authenticity.
Instagram, meaning maximum photos and minimum content
Instagram is another of the most popular apps that is used to build your reach and create a dedicated community. It is a communication channel in which content is conveyed mainly through images and short videos in the form of videos. Instagram in short is the minimum content and the maximum audiovisual experience. The image value is the highest value here. Therefore, it is important to pay particular attention to the aesthetics of presenting your services, products or lifestyle to recipients. Instagram often performs a cognitive function for the customer and is the recipient's insight into the everyday life of the brand. This is where the customer has the opportunity to get to know our offer visually, which is fundamental because we are all visual learners. By uploading nice photos and interesting videos to the profile, the brand has a better chance of increasing the sales of its services.
Through video to the heart, i.e. creating content on YouTube
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, right after Google. It is also a huge social network centered around audiovisual content. It collects tons of videos of various lengths and contents. Everyone can become a creator here. Visual values are very attractive and important in gaining new customers, which is why video is slowly becoming the best and most effective form of brand, product or service promotion. As a result, YouTube marketing is becoming more and more popular among marketing activities. Videos that explain how to use a product, use a service or "how to do something?" Simple and effective and attractive to the recipient.
Twitter - a place for the brand to talk to the customer
It is a platform intended mainly for conducting discussions between the brand and the audience. The number of observers is not of paramount importance here, but their quality, i.e. activity and involvement in the conversation. Twitter is characterized by the ability to quickly exchange information. Entries on this platform can be up to 140 characters long, which is often a challenge in managing brand communication, but in some industries (such as political) it works perfectly well. It is important to remember that the board does not turn into a billboard.
TikTok, or fast and large numbers
TikTok is a place where video content shot in a vertical position is published. The application allows you to easily assemble the clip, as well as diversify it with additional elements, such as texts, stickers or gifs. TikTok is an application whose algorithm allows you to generate huge ranges even with a small number of observers. This is where audience engagement matters as the TikTok algorithm is eager to promote engaging content. The driving force behind TikTok are trends and challenges, which, thanks to algorithms, generate the highest numbers on this platform. Thanks to the recording of this type of video, you can quickly capture huge views and gain new followers.
Pinterest, which is a huge potential for interesting ads
Pinterest is a medium that is a collection of photo boards. It focuses on visual sensations. It mainly serves as a base with inspiration and graphics. It offers a "visual search" which is becoming more and more popular because it is easier and more attractive to the recipient, especially Gez Z and Millennials. Thanks to visual content, Pinterest is a great platform to advertise your brand with images and videos. It has a particular impact on the increase of brand awareness in the global market, as well as on the sale of products.
LinkedIn as a showcase for the company
LinkedIn is a social networking site that was established to make business and professional contacts. It is often used to recruit new employees for your company. The brand's profile on LinkedIn is most often its showcase on the Internet. The company page on LinkedIn can be used to conduct promotional activities and to increase the popularity, credibility and authenticity of the company. On LinkedIn, brands have the opportunity to increase awareness among other entrepreneurs.
Conducting effective brand communication in social media is very beneficial for achieving the assumed sales or image goals. However, keeping company profiles is not such a simple matter. The choice of social media platforms and effective communication depends on the industry and target at which the brand wants to target. Therefore, it is very important to create a professional strategy that will be most effective. Inappropriate selection of portals results in the lack of achievement of the intended results, which, unfortunately, is associated with wasted time and lost potential.
