Social Media – a Friend With Benefits

For most of us social media has become a way of life. We drink our morning coffee while checking our Facebook page, we go to work and look for potential business partners on LinkedIn, and before buying something we read customers’ opinions posted on brand pages.

If a few years ago social networks were seen as simply chit-chat channels, today the whole world is talking social media which means not only big companies but every firm and C-level executive needs to be media active. Michael Stelzner, CEO and founder of Social Media Examiner, has shown in his annual Social Media Marketing Industry Reports that over the last four years social media has moved from an “uncertain strategy”, to a “permanent fixture” and last year statistics prove it is an important tool in any savvy media’s toolkit.

Still, some people doubt the huge impact social media has over abusiness’ stakeholders,but reading about the benefits of social networking may change their minds. According to a social media survey conducted by Mercadien Group 60.4% of business owners use successfully social media for organization branding.

Also, the “2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report” showed that:

• 88% of the 3300 surveyed marketers agreed that social media lets people know that you’re around by generating media exposure
• 72% said that it increased their traffic and the number of subscribers
• 56% were happy that social media brought them new business partnerships
• 43% said it helped them improve sales
• 49% observed an overall reduction of marketing expenses.

After you have built a strong online reputation, social media allows you to quickly announce new products, promotions and special offers, sales, contests (but don’t keep bugging your loyal customers with that, they may become immune to it).

To really boost your social media efforts you need to combine them with other online marketing tools like email marketing and search engine marketing. By integrating your efforts you get better results, reaching more of your target audiences.

As a conclusion, every company should try to explore and experiment as much as possible with social media tools to obtained enhanced benefits for the business.

Today’s post presented just a few of the reasons you should use social media. There are many other benefits from social media campaigns, as one thing is clear - its endless resourcefulness. Feel free to share with us any interesting benefits and results from using social media strategies.