Beyond A Nice-Thing-To Have, Social Media Can Make or Break a Business

Do all brands need social media? Originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

With the strong development of business on social networks, I think brands need to be really interested in developing their influence on social media platforms. Along with the rapid increase of social network users today, this is one of the most important strategies that brands need to pay attention to. Here are a few reasons will help you understand why.

1. Social Media Posts Drive Targeted Traffic

Whatever your industry, segment and audience, a substantial portion of your customers and leads are on social. A recent Pew Research Center study found that 68% of American adults are Facebook users. Among 18 to 24-year-olds, 78% use Instagram and 45% are on Twitter. Even among Americans 65 and older, 37% are social media users.

Having access to all those customers helps you boost traffic, particularly for new site content. When you post a new blog or update your homepage, it can take a while to get traction with Google. That means very few customers will know the new content is there until the next time they’re searching for your product or service.

2. Using Social Media For Business Boosts Your Site’s SEO

Search engine crawlers know which pages are consistently earning traffic and which are just floating out there, forgotten and ignored. Although your killer content strategy is the most important factor in your search rankings, driving traffic to your optimized pages will cause them to climb much faster.

A lot of times, this can be as simple as re-sharing evergreen content (of course, in addition to sharing your new content when it goes live). We recommend each post be re-shared once a month — a task that doesn’t have to be as time-intensive as you might think. With Facebook’s scheduling tool or Hootsuite (for Twitter), you can set the entire month all at once and you’re done.

3. Social Media Ads Allow Targeting and Retargeting

Why advertise on social media?

Because social media platforms offer highly targeted ads, which can be customized around your customers’ needs. Facebook ads, for example, can target customers by factors like age, location, education level, industry and even user behavior — e.g., the pages a user has liked.

4. Social Media Is The Perfect Addition To Your PR Strategy

Press releases are an important part of any marketing strategy, especially when you’re launching a new product or making a huge change in your company, but most people get the distribution part terribly wrong. If what you’re accustomed to is writing a press release and sending it out on PRWeb, you’re wasting your money.

5. Your Competition Is Already Social

The crowded world of social media branding can feel very intimidating. Most brands have at least a token social media presence, and in some industries, multiple channels is the norm. For example, 91% of retail brands are using at least two social media platforms. So, what hope do you have of getting your brand noticed on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram?

It’s a lot easier than you think, because most brands aren’t doing it right.

Contributed by Kane Harry, M.B.A Master of Business Administration Degrees, University of Sheffield (2014)