Advantages of social media for small businesses
Did you know that in 2020 there were 23 million social media users in the US only?
Did you know that the worldwide social media users reached 4.2 billion in January 2021, According to Statista.com? This means almost two-thirds of the 7.75 billion world population is on social media, and more people daily visit social media than they
visit the streets! When we consider this, one thing is clear, a small business owner can get more customers online on social media than in an outlet.
So, do you have engaging social media pages for your business? Do you advertise your business on social media? If the answer is No, you must hurry now! Starting a page on leading social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok is pretty easy and free!
Are they only sites? No! You can use Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr, etc. You can choose a set of different platforms based on your business location and the nature of the business.
Now, let me give you three key facts to emphasize the value of social media for small businesses.
1. Build a social interface for your business with recommendations
You cannot run a business alone. You may argue. But still, the answer is NO. You need customers to buy your products and services. Now you see my point!
Connecting with people is the main purpose of social media, and You need to build creative and trusting social platforms for your business. You can interact with many people and grow your brand reputation. Also, as a small business owner, you can join the community of other small business owners and share ideas and thoughts. That way, you can build an authentic community to recommend others and get recommended. These communities give the critical business advantage and require help in many forms.
When you have a social media site, you can add reviews and recommendations of your customers. Besides, customers can tag you when they use your product, which improves your brand’s visibility. Also, you can get help from your family and friends to promote your business by sharing your products and giving recommendations on their social media pages.
You can see how recommendations help instill trust in a potential customer on a brand by checking the image below.
When customers love your products/services, they are more likely to recommend them to their friends and family. When you have a nicely managed social media site, your recommendation can reach worldwide easily.
2. Brand awareness and advertising
Branding has become easy with social media. You can develop friendly social media pages with your logo, themes, and links to your website. You can use social media for business announcements and advertising. Currently, social media are the most cost-effective advertising medium that can reach a targeted audience of millions.
Think for a moment, how much would they charge for a TV advertisement? It would be a considerable amount. But you only need a mere 5 dollars to start advertising on Facebook. You can decide the audience, the budget, and what the advertisement will look like on Facebook. Similarly, you can use other social media platforms.
You can use hashtags, creative captions, designs, videos, or images for advertisements. Good social media branding strategies make reaching customers easy and save time and money.
3. Reach more customers and Increase website traffic
83 percent of people discover new products or services on Instagram every day, according to a survey. Instagram acts as one of the leading social media sites for businesses, and we can see various products and services on our feed relevant to our previous searches. The algorithms of social media sites encourage people to explore the products by these suggested pages and buy them. That is a good reason for a small business owner to create a social media account and start advertising.
According to Facebook, 1.79 billion people use Facebook every day. And more than half of them usually stay in an online store on Facebook, scrolling up and down to see the products and services. If you have your website tagged on the Facebook page, there is a 99% chance that they will click on that and visit your website for more details. This is how you can get more traffic to your website.
Even though you do not have a website, the Facebook/Instagram insights will show you how much traffic you had only to your page. When you have many visitors to your pages, there is a huge chance that most of them will buy your products.
Other than these key facts, social media has many more advantages for a small business. Here are a few of them.
- For effective communication
- To engage with the audience
- To stay in the competition
- To know the competitors
- For better marketing management
- To boost sales
- To target the relevant customers
- To attract customers using better designs and creativity
- To start online shops like Facebook shop
- To Run ad campaigns
- For getting feedback easily