Do I need social media? 5 reasons you NEED to be active on social channels
If you’re a business owner and you believe that social media is merely a ‘tick box’ and can’t drive real results… then I’m here to tell you - you’re stuck in the past. And it’s time to change!
There are SO many reasons why you should be active on social media, but here are 5 of the most important ones:
1) You can drive brand awareness
By being on social media you open yourself up to such a wide audience that you may otherwise not be able to reach. It’s estimated around 3.6bn people in the world are on social media, estimated to rise to over 4bn in the coming years. That’s over half the population!
You might think social media is just for young people, but there are people of all ages active on social media, and different platforms are better for certain demographics than others. COVID-19 has only accelerated the number of people that have a social media account now too, meaning there are more people online than ever. If your brand isn’t online too, you’re missing out.
You’ve seen brands with thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of followers. They started with zero once upon a time, but have stayed on trend and maximised the use of new social media platforms. In doing so, they became connected with so many people across the globe that they may otherwise not have been able to connect with. This brand awareness driven through social media will have played a huge factor in their business success!
2) You can build real connections with followers
It’s not just important to reach all these followers and have your brand known. It’s important to build real connections. This is what will truly drive growth of your brand, because these people won’t just buy from you once. They’ll buy again, and again, and again.
It’s important to humanise your brand in a way that followers find relatable and feel connected to. You can do this in a number of ways. One of these ways is to tell your brand story - how did you start, what are your values, where to do you aim to be?
Another way is to show the faces behind the brand, whether this is the founder, employees, or working with authentic influencers in your industry. People buy from people!
3) You can start conversations with your audience
This builds on from the point of building real connections. You can use your social channels to start conversations - which can be really beneficial to your business.
Social media is a great place to gather research from your audience and find out why they follow you and what they want to see from you in future. This could help with new product developments, future partnerships, or simply what content they love to see most from you.
Utilising features such as polls is a great way to engage with your audience and find out this information in a simple but fun way- and it could be this feedback that helps drive your business growth to something you thought you’d never achieve!
4) You can boost your revenue
If you think brands don’t make money through social media, I’m here to tell you you’re very wrong. I’ve seen first-hand that brands with a few thousand followers can make thousands of pounds every single month! It’s absolutely possible with the right social media strategy.
That being said, it’s not always easy. Social media is much, much more than simply posting pretty pictures of your products and hoping users will be interested. There’s SO much more that goes into social media to make it a success - and one of the key points is consistency. If you aren’t being consistent with showing up on your socials and engaging with your ideal audience, then you’re going to struggle
5) It’s very cost-effective
To be active on social media channels themselves is FREE. This means the only investment you will need to put in is time. But you need to remember that to be successful on social media you really do need to invest the time and consistency into it, and it shouldn’t be put on the back burner with you posting sporadically every other week. If you treat social media in this way then you’ll struggle to grow and make connections with people, and will struggle to turn followers into customers.
If you don’t have the time to be consistent on your own small businesses social media, then you should look to hire in or outsource a social media manager to manage this for you. Hiring someone that will dedicate the time to it will help drive the growth you want, and it will provide you with a great return on investment in the long run!
