Believe it or not, I am still seeing many businesses shying away from social – either not even getting on it or, yes, having profiles there, but doing nothing. Why? Are you scared? Of what?

To be honest with you, the pros far outweigh the cons.

Today, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are your most powerful instruments for two-way communication and digital relevancy. This means, they offer you the opportunity to talk directly with your customers, but most importantly your customers have the means to talk back to you too, anytime, anywhere, about their needs, their wants, their pain points. And this is where the power of social media lies – in communication that is meaningful. 15 years ago were able to ever come so close to your customers? Did you ever have the opportunity to be so relevant? I’m guessing no.  

What some still get wrong is that social media is just another advertising tool. Yes, there’s this great marketing vehicle called native advertising, but the reality is that broadcasting a message and selling, selling, selling don’t work anymore. As Brian Solis says: “People are searching for answers and directions, not messages or sales pitches.” It is ‘peer recommendations’ (the reviews and opinions about products and services by other people like us) that we seek on social media and that today are absolutely critical to your business for one very simple reason: people trust friends and others like them, not corporate talk. Research shows that 75% of consumers do not even believe ads tell the truth, whereas 90% would turn to friends for brand recommendations and 71% are more likely to buy a product if someone referred to it on social media. Pretty serious numbers here, don’t you think?

So, here’s what you can get out of social:

9 Reasons Why You Need to Get on Social

1. Improving your brand reach and ncreasing brand awareness by bringing attention to your products, services, events, campaigns, initiatives, people and anything around your business.
2. Participating in direct, real-time and instantaneous two-way communications with customers that can help you better serve them, but also identify consumer needs and wants as well as to receive customer feedback to accordingly improve your offerings; in other words ‘free’ market research.
3. Establishing your brand reputation and engaging with customers in a personal manner in order to build relationships with them and ultimately improve customer satisfaction and loyalty to turn people into your brand ambassadors and gain regular referrals.
4. Attracting people to your site, generating leads, converting them into customers and then delighting those customers to retain them – social media can be powerful throughout the entire inbound marketing methodology.
5. Standing out among the noise with creative initiatives or use of Vines, Instagram videos and so being relevant to your audience.
6. Improving SEO and driving traffic back to the corporate website.
7. Engaging with relevant media to pursue new PR opportunities.
8. Establishing thought leadership and showing the personality behind the brand by sharing company relevant information such as staff changes, new business initiatives, charitable activities, success stories and expertise, so showing the human part, not the machine or organisation.
9. Performing competitor research and monitoring what others are doing to help you make informed decisions where to direct your business and marketing activities.

What matters most is that your clients and customers are on social media. Actually, EVERYONE is on social media. You can’t escape it anymore. Finding ways to engaging with your audience can only benefit you, because as Seth Godin says “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell”. And social media is one of the most powerful storytelling tools.  

Are you on social? How has it benefitted you?