If you’re a small business owner, then you know that social media is important. But what are the specific benefits of social media? Is it worth your limited time and money? Can diligent, intelligent social media content grow your business? The short answer is yes!
In this blog post, we’ll go over some of the biggest benefits of using social media for your small business.
We’ll cover topics like improving brand awareness, increasing website traffic, and connecting with customers.
"60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram."
By the end of this post, you’ll have a better understanding of why social media is so important for small businesses and how to use it to your advantage.
It’s time to put your social media strategy on point. If you’re not taking advantage of the power and popularity that comes with platforms like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Clubhouse, or Instagram – then it is definitely worth considering how many potential customers are missing out on!
6 Excellent Ways Social Media Will Help You Grow Your Small Business
Table of Contents
1 - Share Your Content on Social Media to Boost Traffic to Your Website
It doesn’t matter if your business is in Hyannis, Orleans, Chatham, Wellfleet, Plymouth or (especially) online, your small business website is the foundation of your online presence.
One of the best ways to use social media for your small business is by sharing your website content on social media. This will help you to boost traffic to your website, and it can also help to increase brand awareness.
Use quality content. Read Why High-Quality Website Content Helps Grow Your Business
Create cute, informative, or entertaining social media content. When you do that, it catches people’s attention. It makes them want to know more about what you offer. And it leads them to your site where they can find out the specifics of what you have for sale.
When you share your website content on social media, be sure to include a link back to your website. You can also include a brief description of the content that you’re sharing. This will help to draw attention to your content and it will also help to increase website traffic.
Make sure that you post regularly so that your followers have a reason to keep coming back. It’s excellent and inexpensive way to increase your visibility and bring more visitors.
Ideas for small business website content: What’s the Best Content for My Small Business Website?
2 - Build Brand Awareness with Your Social Media
What Is Brand Awareness?
"Brand awareness is a marketing term that describes the degree of consumer recognition of a product by its name. Creating brand awareness is a key step in promoting a new product or reviving an older brand. Ideally, awareness of the brand may include the qualities that distinguish the product from its competition."
This may seem too simple, but every time you appear in someone’s media feed, you’re building their awareness of your brand. Help your potential customers remember you!
Use a consistent look for your brand, regularly offer interesting, useful, fun, engaging content, and show up on a regular basis. Be sure you include your keywords. Use humor once in a while, share your customer success stories, share a picture of your dog, or cat, or bird, or lizard. Link to free resources. Offer your professional opinions.
A smart tactic is to post images of scenes, things, or places around your business that people will recognize.
Cape Cod is a beautiful place, and many people will recognize local images that you post to your small business social media channels. It’s a great opportunity to associate your business with a great place!
Do you see? If you do these things well, and consistently, you’ll be remembered.
3 - Social Media Helps You Connect with Customers and Build Loyalty
When you do social media well, you’re no longer some anonymous business, you actually build “personal” ties with people.
One of the most important aspects of social media for small businesses is that it helps you connect with customers on a personal level. This builds loyalty among customers, which can result in increased sales and referrals.
There are a lot of options for consumers. This is both good and bad. On the one hand, it’s great that people have a lot of choice. On the other hand, it can be tough to decide which business to trust.
Some businesses aren’t reliable and won’t do anything for you, so people are careful about which businesses they choose to work with.
Most businesses have social media profiles now, and people expect to see legitimate businesses there.
If your business doesn’t have a quality social media profile, that can be a red flag for consumers.
When people feel like they have a connection to your business, they’re more likely to stick around and continue doing business with you.
Happy customers share their experience on their social media account, effectively creating a referral for your business.
If you do a good job on your social media content people will begin to feel like they know you. You’ll gain credibility and trust.
4 - Your Social Media Profiles Can Rank in Searches
You might be surprised to learn that your social media profiles have a chance of ranking alongside the website for certain keywords. You may find that your Instagram or Pinterest post is good enough to show as a search result!
When you optimize your social media profiles for important, related keywords, you give them a better chance of ranking in search engine results pages.
This means that potential customers who are searching for information related to your business can find your social media profiles and learn more about what you have to offer.
5 - People Use Social Media to Find Products and Services
Your social media accounts put your business on very busy “search engines.”
If you think about it, you realize that people don’t use only Google and Bing, they use Facebook, Pinterest, etc. to look for answers.
It’s important to have your business services or products on social media because people are using those sites to search for solutions to their problems.
One-third of respondents say they use social media to discover products, services or brands. Indeed, 43% report that they have increased their use of social media compared to a year ago to do just that, while another 4 in 10 expect to increase their use of social media in order to do so in the next 3 years.
6 - You'll Get More Backlinks to Your Website
Backlinks are like backdoor referrals.
When people see content they like on a social media channel, they will often share it. More people will go to your website to read it, and some of them will share a link to your content. This will help to generate backlinks to your website, and it can also help to improve your search engine ranking.
When people see content they like, they can share it, which is good all by itself. When they do, they will often tag you/your business as well, which sends people directly to your page.
Backlinks used to be enormously important as a search engine ranking factor, but that has been declining since Google began implementing and improving Natural Language Processing (NLP).
But they are still valuable!
The more high-quality backlinks that you have pointing to your website, the better off you’ll be. So make sure that you share great content on social media often!
Conclusion: Social media is a powerful tool for small businesses
Done well, social media can help you improve brand awareness, website traffic, and customer engagement. It can be a great source of new business as people find your products and services.
If you’re not using social media yet, now is the time to start. And if you are using social media but aren’t seeing the results you want, we can help.
We can help you:
- Create great website content
- Integrate your website with social media platforms
If you struggle to create social media content, talk to Nicole Porter, owner of Monomoy Social Media.
Nicole offers social media marketing services that will help you get the most out of your social media campaigns.
