Social Networking Advantages for Businesses

Whether you’re a small local business or an MNC, social networking is something that you need to take notice of. A major chunk of your customer base is socially active on various networks, and this becomes a great way to get in touch with them. 

Gone are the days when advertising was the only way you could connect with your customers. With the explosion of popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and many more, companies have jumped onto the social media bandwagon. 

The small business and social media 

While MNCs were bound to make the move first, small businesses have caught up, and how! A recent survey (carried out across United States) found that out of 600 small business owners, 90% of them were active on social networking sites. The bottom line is that you need to stay in touch with your customers as much as possible. This is even more crucial for small businesses that are looking to create a deep relationship with customers. 

If you’re still not convinced about the importance of social networking for your business, here are a few advantages that you just cannot ignore.

Improves your brand image: When you have a Facebook and/or Twitter profile, your fans and followers will familiarize themselves with your brand image. This is helpful in building up a following that recognizes your company image whenever it pops up anywhere. It’s a great way to enhance your brand on a larger platform.

• Increase site traffic: Your social media pages are the perfect place to promote the official website of your brand. Many small businesses find that people spend more time on the Facebook pages of a brand than visiting the website. That’s why you should try to incorporate your site address into posts or tweets that you make.
• Offer varied promotions: If you’ve been using Facebook pages for a while, you will know all about the promotional offers that you can come up with. There are various ways you can attract the attention of your followers. Tweet promotions can also help you offer your customers some great deals. This is especially important during the holiday season.
• Build strong customer relationships: Identifying followers who are most interactive on your social media pages is a good idea. This way, you can offer them freebies from time to time, and it’s a good starting point to build customer relationships. The posts you make should be highly interactive and relevant so that followers feel the urge to comment.
• Gain insights: Social media sites offers brands in-depth insights about follower behavior. This can give you a good idea of what kind of posts do well and which ones don’t. For the brand owners, this gives them practical information on how to frame posts and when to publish them.
• Expand your market: The sharing features on social media sites are quite powerful and can turn out to be great tools for brands. If one follower shares a brand post with his/her friends, then that brand will gain quite a number of new fans. 

Promoting your brand on a social networking site is not easy, but it is required in today’s day and age. Companies garner a lot of attention from their social media pages, and many have witnessed a rise in sales. 

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social media promotion. The biggest advantage you get is that such sites offer a more personal approach. Brands can formulate their updates in such a way that followers can be attracted to the status updates, tweets, and other posts. 

Author's Bio: This is a guest post by Mark Bennett of telcoservicesgroup.net, get current fios promotions with the best savings.