5 Reasons Your Business Should Be Using Social Media

     Social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others, have grown quickly in importance and influence in business marketing. If you haven’t incorporated social media into your business marketing plan, you may want to rethink your strategy.

    If you’re reading this, chances are your business has a website. Why did you decide to incorporate that into your business plan? Probably for the same reasons I’m going to tell you you need to look into adopting social media. Here’s 5 reasons for utilizing social media.  

1.     Your customers are using social media. To reach them, you need to use it, too. According to the federal Small Business Administration, more than 46 percent of adults in the U.S. use at least one social media site. That number goes up every day.
2.     Friends of your customers are using these sites. If your customers are using social media, then their friends and family are using it, too. These sites sites let your customers market your business for you.
3.     Your competition are using these sites. Go online and see what your competitors are doing. If you find them on any social media sites, then they are already doing something you are not. They are marketing to audiences that you may not be and in a different way. Furthermore, according to the Small Business Administration, 51 percent of Facebook fans and 67 percent of Twitter followers are more likely to buy from the businesses they follow on these sites.
4.     These links count. Marketing on the internet effectively is all about building the number of links you have in order to direct traffic to your website. When people talk about your content and share your website link on these sites, the search engines pay attention and your page ranking improves. All of this goes to bring traffic to your website and business to your door.
5.     It puts a face to your business and humanizes it. People like to do business with people, not corporations. By putting your business (and employees) on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, you put a face on it. Furthermore, unlike tv commercials, billboards or print advertisements, social media sites allow for interactions and conversations between customers, potential customers and your business. These conversations make your business “real” to customers. Customers will want to do business with your business’ people which they now feel they related to.

These 5 reasons should be reason enough for you to adopt a social media strategy into your business marketing plan.