Whether your brand is new or simply just getting its feet wet in the world of social media, there’s no wrong time to establish a presence. You certainly don’t need to be on every channel, but it’s worth investigating which ones work best for your business goals.
Here are 5 reasons why your brand needs a social media presence
Control the Conversation
People are going to say things about your brand. People are going to Google your brand. The conversation will happen, so you might as well exert control over it.
Social media has become an overwhelmingly popular avenue for customers to air their complaints, praise, and everything else. After all, helping your customers find love is free publicity.
52% of customers expect brands to respond to reviews within a week while 72% of people who complain on Twitter expect a brand response within an hour.
On the flip side, customers love having a social media presence to tag when they’re happy – like if they’ve found a cute pair of yoga pants that they want to show off, or just experienced great customer service at a restaurant on their birthday. According to this study , 44% of millennials use social media to spread the word about products or services. It’s no wonder influencer marketing has taken on a life of its own.
In a crisis situation, it’s always best to be able to reach your customers as quickly and directly as possible. This can easily be done via social media.
[Tweet “Social media is like a cocktail party. You’re always better off hosting and mingling than being a wallflower. tweets”]
Build loyalty
High engagement on social media may not translate into immediate revenue, but engagement boosts brand loyalty which ultimately becomes revenue. People who are loyal to a brand drive 33% more sales and 18% more traffic compared to a regular customer.
Whether it takes a few weeks or a few months, building loyalty among your existing customers is a great way to build out your brand’s future. Featuring happy customers is a shines the spotlight on them. If your customers are happy enough to act as your ambassadors, they’re essentially marketing for you.
Burners, Deadheads, and Trekkies – what do these all have in common? They’re names of communities that people identify with because they band together to talk about a common interest. If your brand name translates well into a community nickname, go for it.
Run contests that will keep them revisiting your social media channels because they feel they might gain something from it. Add genuine value to their lives without being overly salesy with your content.
As Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media put it:
“All the people who feel creepy about social media feel that way because they are trying to get more value than they create. All the spammy methods, all the ways of getting more influence, or social climbing. If you focus on creating value, you actually do capture more of it in the long run.”
Get Feedback
Whether you’re a one-man business or you work with a team, social media can act as the canary in the mine that lets everyone else know what’s up. If customers consistently complain or criticize the same features of your product or service, that’s a great indication of where you should be concentrating your efforts.
Engage with them. Acknowledge them. If you’ve made changes based on their feedback, let them know. When customers feel that you’re paying attention to them, they’ll be more apt to trust your brand.
At a previous social media management role, my audience was a finicky bunch who were very quick to criticize. I turned this around by asking them for their ideas, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. These posts drove higher levels of engagement but also helped improve our brand perception.
Give your brand a personality
Your social media presence is a great opportunity to define your brand’s voice and show your customers that you’re more than a service. Who are you? What’s your backstory? What milestones are you celebrating? Social media is a great chance to showcase these things.
Imagine that if you told three different companies how much you loved their product, they’d come back with three different responses. Which one is yours?
Think of the brands you admire on social media and why. If you can kickstart a list of the characteristics about them you find pleasing as a consumer, it will give you an idea of what you value – and how you can work it into your social media routine.
Here’s a great guide to determining what your brand’s tone of voice should be on social media: https://www.distilled.net/tone-of-voice/
More conversion opportunities
As I mentioned previously, you shouldn’t think of social media as a direct path to dollars in the bank. It’s more of a friendly introduction. If a consumer engages with your brand’s social media presence for a few months, it’s a more realistic projection that it could lead to a sale down the road.
It’s been said that marketing is really just flirting, and that principle applies 100% here. Even if a potential customer isn’t buying, they offer a referral now that they’ve been made aware of your brand.
It’s absolutely worth putting yourself out there.
About the Author
Michelle Rick is a social media and content marketing consultant who specializes in the startup and retail industry. Visit her at michellearick.com for social media tips and Amy Poehler quotes.
Hey Karen,
I couldn’t agree more with the importance of social media for your brand. It’s especially more important as we move into a more mobile first world.
I really liked the points on giving your brand personality and getting feedback. Also I enjoyed the conversion one because it’s all about building relationships. Down the road one of those relationships could lead to a sale that helps both people involved.
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Hey Graham, thanks for commenting! I’m so glad you enjoyed the post. I think defining personality and gathering feedback are so important for growing a business, and you’re right about us living in a mobile-first world! Being able to follow a brand on Instagram makes them that much more accessible.
Starting on Social Media is hard but once you get the hang of it, it’s so worth it. I think providing people with value is crucial to the growth of your account, which ends up increasing your credibility. That’s why I love social media. Great post and thank you for your insight.
Music to my ears, Jocelyn. Increasing credibility is so important for your brand’s reputation! I love all of your comments. Thanks so much for reading!
I feel like there’s so much to learn about social media and it’s hard to know how to be an expert on every platform. This is such an excellent post! Thanks for sharing!
Polly, I completely agree – it is hard to be an expert on every platform! This is why I think it’s great to figure out what channel works best for your business objectives so you don’t overextend your bandwidth. Social media is such a 24/7 party!
Thank you so much for reading and commenting!
Great Points. Social Media provides a great way to display the personality of your brand. Be consistent and be you.
Thank you Jasmine!
Hi Karen,
In the modern world, marketing of everything get dependent on social media and this tricks is working wonder. Social media is the best way of connecting people from different area and fields.
I guess more than half of people in the world have own account in different social media platform. They keep up to date yourself by opening, sharing things and connecting with new people daily. So the reason which you have pointed here on the presence of brand in social media is definitely correct.
There are many new interesting reason that is informative for me. Feeling happy to get more reason to present brand in social media. The best reason which I like to mention from this post is : it provides more conversion opportunities and easy to get feedback from audience. We must make a powerful engagement with our audience so that they will love with our brands and interested on every activity of brand.
Thanks for the information.
With best wishes. 🙂
– Ravi.
Thanks for reading Ravi! I am glad you found this post informative.
Brand management and awareness is very important. Thank you for giving us reasons to control our own brand’s destiny through social media. Most important, I believe, is receiving feedback from the public so you can improve your product or service. Thanks again
Thank you for reading! You’re right, collecting feedback is one of social media’s great features.
Hi Karen,
Thanks for such an interesting read. I like the way you gently guide the reader through the behemoth that is social media. As we move towards mobile oriented social media search, our demand for instant gratification has never been higher. We are becoming more picky too, expecting more for less but on the flip side we are becoming more vocal about our likes and dislikes so this is valuable as you have mentioned with more chance of feedback and conversion opportunities.
Again thanks for the article, I really enjoyed it.
Thanks for reading, Lee! I like to say, go where the eyeballs are – and they’re certainly on social media these days! Glad you enjoyed the post.