Why Your Business Need A Social Media Strategy

Since its rise in the early 2000s, social media has risen to become a key part of our day-to-day lives. From keeping in touch with friends to reviewing brands and soliciting support, social media enables us to do it all. Naturally, this means that no savvy business owner can afford to ignore social media.

In this day and age, not having a solid social media strategy in place is akin to hobbling yourself before the race begins. With customers increasingly turning to social media to praise or trash brands, it’s important for organizations of all sizes to be present on social media if they want to protect and cultivate their brand image. In the following paragraphs, we’re going to explore how social media can help a business and why you need to get a social media strategy in place right now.

Why you need a social media strategy

First let’s take a look at social media today.

Since its birth, social media has grown tremendously in terms of user base and adoption, and it is set to grow even further in the coming years. Currently, there are over a billion active social media users on Facebook alone. (source: Statista).

What’s more, out of these billion Facebook users, over 76% check social media on a daily basis. This checking of social media involves keeping in touch with friends as well as interactions with influencers and brands that these users love and follow.

This user base probably contains a large portion of your existing and target customer base, if not all of it. In other words, it’s a huge goldmine of data and leads that is just waiting to be tapped.

Wondering what you can do with this? For starters, you can use it to carry out qualitative research about your customers and content. You could also use it to connect with influencers toe help support your marketing and communication campaigns. Apart from this, social media can also serve as a customer service platform!

But to do any or all of this effectively, you will need to have concrete strategy in place. Once you do this, you’ll be able to:

1. Increase customer engagement — In an increasingly customer centric market, customer engagement is a key to success. Forrestor defines customer engagement as “the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence that an individual has with a brand over time.” With half, if not all, your user base on social media channels, social media plays a key role in increasing and maintaining customer engagement. From regular announcements, to contests, support and more, an active, effective social media strategy helps get your customers more involved with your organisation and can potentially increase their loyalty to your brand.
2. Increase product outreach — Everyone knows the power of customer ratings and reviews. These ratings are a key part of the Amazon experience. In fact, they play a major role in influencing sales. So, what if you could tap into the power of these ratings and multiply their effect manifold? Social media influencers allow you to do just that. From known celebrities to self-made bloggers and other such stars, social media is replete with people whose every post could influence thousands of opinions and sales. These people are known as influencers. By partnering up with influencers, you could give your brand a huge boost. Take GAP’s Stlyd.by campaign, for example. This campaign featured several social media influencers who showed how they incorporate GAP clothing into their wardrobes. The involvement of influencers gave this campaign tremendous reach! (More examples here!)
3. Manage brand reputation — Social media has given voice to those who had to struggle to be heard, but it has also made it easier to make or break a brands reputation. Some customers use social media as their first avenue of redressal. Others use it as a last resort — due to which their posts tend to be harsher too. In either case, these customers expect a quick response, failing which they could do some serious damage to a company’s reputation. By being having a robust strategy for social media grievance redressal ensures you are prepared to deal with negative customer feedback and any backlash that comes your way. It makes it easier to manage crises and maintain your brands reputation.

As you can see, having a social media strategy can lead to significant benefits for your brand. If you’d like to know more about setting up the best social media management tool for your organisation, please reach out to us. We’ll be more than happy to help!