There are many benefits of regularly posting content to your social media channels. Social media provides an excellent platform for keeping in touch with your family, friends and most importantly, your customers. Used for business, you can post product updates, release company news, and keep your customers engaged with your brand.
Over the years, various social media networks have proven as great mediums to retain existing customers and win new ones. You can use platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to continue communicating whilst attracting new prospects, nurturing them, and converting them into customers.
As is the case with any marketing activity, a great place to start or recalibrate is by creating a plan for your social media marketing campaign and monitor the results. Bear in mind that it is recommended that any social media marketing activity be part of a long-term marketing strategy. Still, with the vast numbers of people active on social media, this kind of marketing’s potential is enormous. Below are ten benefits and of posting regularly to not only leverage social media but gain new customers.
1. Listen to what your customer wants
Posting regularly to your socials networks allows you to stay connected because you are consistently showing up. Your content to resonate with your audience needs an investment in time to listen so that you can understand your customer’s needs, wants, challenges, and how you best help them is critical. The most valuable information, however, will not always be found on your social media platforms. It would be best also to cast your attention and ‘listening ears’ wider to learn what topics are of interest to your potential customers. You need to understand what the current buzz is in your sector, so you need to start monitoring relevant keywords. Fortunately, there are tools that you can use to monitor social media activity. You can find out what people are saying about your brand, your competitors, and industry keywords using tools like Agorapulse, Mention, and Brandwatch.
2. Engage with your customers
Your audience most likely doesn’t appreciate being talked at; they prefer to engage in conversations. So, a social media strategy that entails merely advertising and selling is unlikely to bear fruit. The best approach is to play an active role in regularly posting inspirational, community focussed, educational and entertaining content. Further to consistently posting great content allows you to start and engage in conversation by commenting on and liking posts and sharing your content. Listening to the conversation, as mentioned above, will help you plan and get your social media campaign started. By monitoring the broader discussion, you will have the opportunity to interact with people who may not yet have discovered your brand or give you the chance to re-engage with existing customers.
3. Reason to join social media groups
People buy things from brands they know and trust, and social media provides an excellent way of getting your brand in front of a wider audience. By regularly creating and posting content, you have a perfect opportunity to join social media groups related to your niche. Having an audience that you know will have interests related to the products and services you sell. Remember, though, that social media marketing is a long-term strategy. It would be unwise to bombard a social media group with advertisements. Instead, join the conversation, share your most useful information, and nurture your new potential customers.
4. Opportunity to widen your reach and social media ads
If you only have a small following, you can increase engagement by using existing and new content you have created and invest in social media ads. All the powerful social media platforms offer advertising opportunities that are highly targeted and extremely effective. However, hard-sell ads are not always the best way to generate new customers on social media. You will probably find that it will be more useful to attract people to your sales funnel by advertising things that add value, for example, free or special offers, eBooks, and guides.
5. Stay true to your brand identity
You want people to get to know your brand on social media. So, regularly posting means you have the opportunity to develop a consistent personality for your brand. By building your constant posting muscle, you have the chance to stick to the same look and feel across all channels, including your website, social media profiles, and emails, and keep the same style and tone of voice in all your communications. The objective is for people to recognise your posts instantly. And, if they like your style, people will read your new content the moment they do spot it, like a mighty content superpower!
6. Helps you reach out to social media influencers
Social influencers don’t always demand vast sums of money to mention a brand. There may well be influencers within your niche with a modest but well-targeted following who will be willing to work in partnership with your business. Indeed, many people trust non-celebrity social influencers more than they would trust A-listers like the Kardashians. By showing you are an active social media participating business, you can attract some mutually beneficial collaborations. You can incentivise social influencers with cross-promotional partnerships, free products, or by offering exclusive promotional codes for the influencer to promote to their followers. Same influencers will also be happy to review your products if you send them a sample or invite them to your experience so long as the item is relevant to the influencer’s niche.
7. Encourages earned media via shares and recommendations
Social validation is a powerful marketing tool. When people see that other, like-minded people recommend a product, they will be more likely to follow suit. So, a reward of posting regular content on your socials is a natural progression to encourage social shares and recommendations of your said content, products and services on social media. Install widgets on your website that will allow people to share your content, rate, and recommend your products. You can also encourage sharing by offering incentives. Merely asking people to share can also trigger the broader distribution of your content. Your audience sometimes needs a little gender reminder, and your blessing to go ahead and feel free to share your post.
8. Great reason to promote user-generated content
Remember that your brand is a community member, and people belonging to communities don’t only promote themselves. You will generate more trust in your brand if you freely share other people’s content and share the content of others, which will likely lead to sharing your content. Promoting other people’s content is another long-term strategy for generating new customers through social media. Of course, you do not want to start promoting competing brands. Even so, people trust other people more than they trust brands. By being generous with your shares, you will make friends within your niche who may later promote your business.
9. Helps you become the ‘go-to’ and a no-strings provider of information
If you are generous with your knowledge, people will come to trust you, and people who trust your brand are far more likely to buy from you and become customers. So, it is best to avoid asking for something in return for every piece of information you offer. Don’t ask for email addresses in return for every download that you provide, for example. Contribute freely to forums and social media discussions and publish and share useful information on your blog, just like we are doing here. Allow people to get to know and trust you first, and you will find it easier to get an email address or a sale later.
10. Makes the customer journey smooth and simple
All of the above points are about gaining trust and business relationships. However, your ultimate goal is to gain visitors to your website and subscribers to your mailing list to generate new customers. So, while the best long-term strategy is to not hard-sell on social media, you must still make it easy for people to buy from you or sign up to your mailing list. Where it is possible, allow customers to purchase directly from your social media feeds. And provide clear calls to action for those who want to visit your website or subscribe to your mailing list.
In summary…
To sum up, people generally go to social media to engage than buy. However, those same people who are there to engage are also potential customers and brand ambassadors. So, regularly creating and posting consistent content allows you to listen, be free with information, and join the broader conversation. In time, by showing up and posting regularly, you will achieve the ultimate benefit, and that is your brand will become a trusted community member, and people buy from brands they trust.
