No matter where you turn or what type of business you are running, it is important to understand just how beneficial social media marketing can be. Most of the developed world and a good portion of developing countries are online and where are they most of the time? That’s right, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Yes, everyone’s gone social and if you know what’s good for your business, you will too. There are some definite advantages of tapping into the power of social marketing which can quickly boost your bottom line if you learn how to be social!
Word Travels Fast
The first thing you should be aware of about the power behind social media is the fact that this is the fastest way to develop brand recognition because, quite honestly, word travels fast. Let’s say for example you have a driving school in the UK, or a site that lists driving schools throughout the country. By posting on a social page that you offer a free Driving Theory practice test software, if just one of your visitors finds it helpful in passing his or her actual test, you’ll see how quickly word travels. Before long you will have their friends, and friends of those friends visiting your site to take that free test. Traffic, not the road kind of course, will build up and before long you will have gained a huge amount of rank with the search engines.
Speaking of Google…
There was a time when Google placed the greatest amount of weight on SEO (Search Engine Optimised) keywords when ranking your website. Whilst SEO is still vital, it doesn’t exactly carry as much weight as it once did. Bounce rate is also huge with the search engines as are other factors like being responsive and also the amount of engagement you can build with your visitors. Social media puts you in a position to engage your audience so that they regularly visit your site and stick around long enough to reduce your bounce rate. In fact, there are a number of reasons why Google loves social media but because they love being social, your business can surely benefit by following suit.
Exponential Exposure
As mentioned above, just one positive post on a follower’s page can lead to exponential traffic to your site. A friend likes your site so their friends visit and the friends of friends then want to see what it’s about and so it continues to the nth power. This gives you literally unlimited (exponential) exposure and that is something that can be free, high-tech ‘word of mouth’ advertising. Yes, you can buy Facebook adverts and those are good as well, but there is nothing quite like friends recommending you to their friends because of the snowball effect.
When it comes to online marketing, it is important to recognise that everyone has indeed gone social. With as few as eight to ten hours a week spent on social media you can unlock almost unlimited power that just few years ago would take more advertising budget than you could ever afford. Want to grow your business quickly and steadily over time? Get with the times – go social.