Marketing on social media may still be a new concept for many businesses. Yet, it’s difficult to imagine life without social media.
Here at Web Strategies, we feel that social media marketing is a great tool for creating an online brand presence and keeping in touch with your loyal customers. For the sake of this post, let’s take a look at what life would be like for your brand without social media and what areas the medium impacts.
People would trust you less
A recent study discovered that 63% of respondents look up products and brands on social media before making purchases. If your brand wasn’t on social media, people wouldn’t be able to find out more about you, and may even purchase from a brand that did utilize social platforms. Furthermore, consumers wouldn’t be able to see the human side of your brand–the part that makes them trust you.
When used correctly, social media platforms become more than just another place for you to promote and sell your products. Your social channels will become the platforms you use to build and maintain relationships with your customers.
You’d be less popular
Popularity on social media reflects authority. Every share, retweet, and like is a great way to build social proof. Basically, the psychological phenomenon works hand-in-hand with social media because:
- People are more likely to engage with a brand that already has a large following, and
- People are more likely to ‘like’ a page that one of their friends already likes
You’d struggle to drive traffic
Typically, social media sites have more daily users than websites, which makes them a great source for referral traffic. So say you didn’t have social media sites and relied solely on your blog and organic clicks. Without the helpful links to your website/blog on social media channels, potential customers just wouldn’t think to check for new content.
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn provide access to a huge pool of potential customers – so without social media, you would see a huge decrease in website traffic.
Your content wouldn’t live up to its full potential
Did you know that branded content on social media influences up to 81% of consumers to buy a company’s product or service?
If you failed to utilize your content on social media, you could potentially miss out on millions of customers. However, simply posting content to social media isn’t enough, you need to know what kind of content performs well on each platform and when the best times to post are.
If you didn’t use social media marketing, it’s pretty clear that your brand would be missing out on some significant opportunities. Love it or hate it: social media marketing works, and it’s here to stay.