How to Use Social Media to Gain a Competitive Advantage |
In case you haven’t realized, the internet has taken over the world, and if your company doesn’t have a social media presence, you will never get ahead of your competition. Yes, there are some people who still prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, but those numbers are few and far between. So if you want to get ahead of your competition, social media marketing should also be a part of your internet marketing campaign. Here are some of the benefits of social media marketing and how you can use it to annihilate your competition.
It doesn’t cost a penny to set up a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter account, each platform is essentially free advertising for your company. All you need to do is manage your accounts by engaging your audience with informative content and you can drastically reduce your advertising costs.
There are many effective forms of advertising, but none of them are as direct as social media marketing. If you sell health foods, you have the option of targeting the people on that social media site who are interested in healthy food. In this way you are not shooting at the air hoping to hit something, you know exactly who you want to target, and you know how to reach them.
The internet is called the world wide web for a reason, in other words, if your company has an online presence, you can access customers no matter what country you they are in. When there was no internet, small businesses were restricted to one country or their local area, now you can make your company a global corporation with the click of a button.
You didn’t become a business owner to get by, you want to make money and you want to make lots of it! Social media can help you achieve your financial goals if you have an effective strategy. A stagnant account isn’t going to generate any leads, you need to engage with your audience by providing content that they are interested in. A powerful online presence will attract attention, and ultimately lead to more sales.
The more customers you have the more money you will make. There are some people who never knew your company existed until they saw you online. You can reach a wider demographic of people when you are more visible, and social media profiles will definitely put your face on the map.
If you want to direct more traffic to your profiles, you will need to optimize them. The bottom line is that social media platforms act as search engines, when a potential buyer is looking for a product, they will type what they are looking for into the search bar, research has shown that customers are more likely to click on something that appeals to them on the first page. So your job is to get on the first page and stay there, there are strategies you can implement yourself to help you like adding certain keywords to your page and having a never-ending stream of good content. However, if you have the funds available, hire an SEO expert to take care of this for you.
Your goal is to stand out from the crowd, at the end of the day, how many businesses are there out there selling the same products as you? Being unique and dynamic and having a strong social media profile will drive more traffic to your website and ultimately lead to more sales. The key is to develop a social media strategy and stick to it, eventually you will see results.