Love it or hate it, social media is now a massive part of business and customer service. Customers expect a business to be searchable through social networks, and can quickly forget about you if you have no social media presence.
In this post, were going ‘back to basics’ on why your business should be using social media in five important points…
1. It will help you deliver better customer service
With nearly all of us engaging with some form of social media these days, it’s important to be in the mix. Customers now expect brands to be on sites like Facebook and Twitter, and will search for you if they have questions, comments or complaints about your products or services. Social media platforms allow instant and personal responses to customers instead of automated emails and cheesy call-hold music.
2. It allows you to manage you brand’s reputation
Social media is also great for managing your reputation; by seeing what people are saying about your brand online, you get a great insight about what people really think about you. Using these platforms to answer questions and problems in a professional and helpful manner can make you the go-to experts for your field, which can only be a good thing.
3. Using social media can drive website traffic and increase brand awareness
Engaging with social media and creating new and interesting content can drive people to your brand’s website. Things like hosting a blog on your website and using social media to link back there is a great way of allowing customers to interact with your website. Make sure your blog is relevant to your business though.
4. It could help improve your search engine ranking
Notice those little share buttons you see on websites everywhere? While they are great to share content you’re interested in with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and so on, they are also very useful for companies wanting to improve their SEO. Having your content linked back from other places than your own website lets search engines like Google, Bing and the rest know you are a trustworthy website, engaging well on the Internet, which in turn will push you up the rankings when customers search for you online.
5. It can keep customers thinking about you
According to research by the bls.gov, people spend on average 6.9 hours interacting with social media sites per month. It’s a lot more when you add on the hours spent logged onto social media left idle.
By content assistant – Sean Haydock – @bSeanty
