Online Social Media Benefits for Small Businesses
19th July 2010
What is a Social Media Website?
As opposed to a website that just provides static content to users, Social Media websites promote and heavily rely on user interaction by encouraging people to share their opinions and information. The bulk of the content available on Social Media type sites is dynamic and user-generated. You probably frequent these types of websites recreationally.
People are talking about their experiences with your business whether you like it or not. Social Media gives you the chance to find out what your customers are saying, interact with them and expose your business access to a larger (but often more targeted) audience.
Examples of Popular Social Media Websites
- Digg
- YouTube
A Common Misconception
The numerous links to your website from Social Media sites such as Twitter and Facebook will not directly benefit your search engine ranking as they are set to “no follow”. However, they do a great job of directing traffic to your website and the Social Media profile pages can be indexed by Google.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing
More Control Over Your Brand Name
If a potential client types your brand name into a search engine, you want the top results to be of pages that are owned and run by your company and marketers. Social Media helps you to manage this task by usually offering URLs that are unique to your brand name. This also hinders spammers and competitors from abusing or misrepresenting your brand.
Increased Traffic and Exposure
Social Media sites receive and generate massive amounts of traffic. According to Alexa ratings, Facebook & YouTube are the 2nd and 3rd most visited websites in the world. Creating indexed profiles for your business on various Social Media platforms can expose you to a wider audience and increase organic traffic to pages on your main website.
Customer Interaction
A Facebook fan page for your business is a great example of how social media can help you interact with clients by replying to their compliments, complaints, criticisms and concerns. It is also a good way to feature incentive programs (“Like” our page and get a 10% discount) and limited time special offers.
Increased Transparency
Customers appreciate seeing the people behind the brand. Allowing customers to meet your team and read testimonials helps to establish trustworthiness and familiarity.
Industry Networking
Social Networking allows you to connect with professionals in your industry. It gives you the chance to develop business relationships, share ideas and advertise job opportunities.
Price
Social Media marketing is relatively cheap compared to other types of marketing campaigns.
What now?
Not every business will necessarily benefit from Social Media Marketing. Get in contact with our Social Media experts and let us help you make informed decisions on how to spend your marketing and advertising budget.
