Social media isn’t just a tool to communicate with friends and family any more, it has a valuable role to play in the B2B marketing environment too. Today, over two billion people have social media accounts with the majority active users of them, and many will be using them for business purposes.
Social media platforms are today recognised as a way for businesses to capture valuable customer data, and more importantly a direct way to reach them. Keeping your focus on your target market is the key to using social media successfully for business. It’s always important to remind yourself who your customers are and what you know about them so that you can use the right platform and content to target them with.
Whether it’s lead generation, driving website traffic, to boost online sales or raise brand awareness, it’s also important to understand what you want to achieve and how to best use each social media platform to achieve your objectives.
Here are five ways social media can help bolster your marketing activities:
- Each day there are more than 500 million Tweets and a staggering 95 million photos and videos uploaded to Instagram. These social media posts can offer real insight about your customers. Apps like Hootsuite can help you collate customer conversations and analyse what is being said about your business.
- A social media presence helps raise brand awareness. Keep customers interested and engaged with your brand and they are far more likely to remain loyal.
- Today’s consumers expect around-the-clock support and almost immediate response when they have an issue. Social media is an excellent way of demonstrating that you care about your customers and that you are able to resolve issues quickly.
- Social media helps improve your search rankings. It helps direct prospects to your website and the more shares your content gains means you can work your way up the search rankings.
- It is also a fast and convenient way to share content in a way that resonates with your target audience. Whether it’s via the means of video, an infographic or blog, there are now many ways to share content and reach your target audiences.
As a B2B PR agency we are increasingly working with our clients to help them shape their social media content and activity. It’s never too late to make a start and there’s nothing to lose and much to be gained.
