By Erin Swan

The importance of social media as a marketing tool is becoming more generally accepted among business owners. Most people understand that you need to use platforms like Twitter and Facebook to advertise their businesses, but few understand how to do so properly or why it is so important. Social media marketing is about far more than just gaining likes, followers, and retweets. It’s about getting new customers and improving conversion rates.

Here are just 3 ways that social media can improve your business. The better you understand these benefits, the better you can utilize social media to your advantage.


Increase Brand Awareness

Simply building a business or a website doesn’t bring in new customers. The notion of “if you build it, they will come,” simply doesn’t work for businesses like it does for cornfield baseball diamonds (ghosts would make lousy customers anyway). Customers need to actually know that your business exists if they’re going to do business there, and social media is one of the best ways to get the word out.

Research has shown that approximately 33% of consumers discover new businesses and products through social networks. Additionally, as much as 75% of American consumers say that their shopping behavior is influenced by product information they find on social media. Given the viral nature of social media, a business can very quickly spread the word about their products and services and reach thousands of potential customers with minimal effort.


Legitimize Your Brand

If you find a new business while performing an online search, how do you know if that business is active? How can you tell if they offer good customer service? How do you know other consumers actually like this business’s product or service? For the answers to these questions, many people turn to social media. While a website will show consumers that you exist, a social media presence can show them that your business is alive and well.

By responding to customers’ concerns on your social media page, you show that you have proactive customer service. And if you have a lot of followers and good Facebook review, potential customers know that others like your product. In fact, 63% of online consumers stated they were more likely to use a business that had a social media presence than one that did not—that’s a lot of potential customers.


Increase Your Sales

In the end, using social media for your business is all about improving that bottom line—that’s the “marketing” in “social media marketing.” By increasing your brand awareness and legitimizing your brand, you should already begin to see increased sales, but social media actually offers ways to directly market to and influence potential customers through social media.

Social media platforms know a lot about the interests and habits of their users. As a marketer, you can use this information to reach out to a specific demographic that you are trying to sell your product to. For example, if you sell outdoor equipment at your store, Facebook can place ads on the newsfeeds of individuals in your area who have expressed an interest in outdoor activities. These types of ads can get as specific as you need them to be so that you can influence exactly the kind of people who will be interested in your products or services.

There are countless other benefits to using social media marketing for your business, but it’s impossible to reap these benefits if you don’t know how to properly use the tools set before you. If you would like to learn more about how to effectively use social media to benefit your business, reserve your spot at eFileCabinet’s Edge User Conference, being held in Las Vegas next month. We’ll be offering courses on this subject as well as other important topics that can help you to build a better business.

Click here to learn more about the conference and reserve your spot.