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Business growth - why is social media essential?
From basement start-ups with a whirring old laptop on an upturned cardboard box, to multinational conglomerates with floor-to-ceiling glass corner offices and individually assigned parking spaces out front, business is business and social media is knocking on the door.
So, what’s the magic number of social media followers? How big does the number before the ‘K’ (or even the ‘M’) need to be before interest in your brand, clicks, and conversions start to show up as revenue in your monthly reports? For a start, you need a social media strategy (that’s not what we’re going to cover today, but check out contentcal.io for publishing help).
Let’s instead take a magnifying glass to the heart of the matter, and uncover the reasons why businesses of all sizes need social media fighting their corner. After all, it’s what the competition is doing, and none of us would want to lose out to companies with spelling mistakes on their homepages and logos that look like the business owner’s 15 year old niece or nephew threw the design together one Sunday morning in exchange for cinema tickets. No. That wouldn’t do.
Social media builds awareness
People love to be entertained. Back in the early days of the internet, cat videos and cheesy animations of badgers dancing to a song that repeated the word badger for a while before occasionally changing to the word mushroom were all the rage. Inboxes were filled with links to ever increasingly silly content - one video of a pink blob called Mr Nice who danced when you clicked on him will forever remain my personal favourite (the traditional Mexican mariachi music that played when you clicked was more fun than a teenager trapped in a boring geography class could handle).
The point is that engaging social media posts get likes and shares. So what? You may ask yourself. A thumbs up isn’t a sale, a repost isn’t a new client. Ah, but with social media we play the impressions game - and we don’t mean who can pull out the best Christopher Walken voice at a party. Impressions are how many people SEE your social media ad.
Make ads. Get shares. Get likes. Get exposure. It works.
Show your cards
Business is about transparency, not about exclusivity. Anybody going into business with the idea of exclusivity in mind is going to find their hopes are built on quicksand. Even if your goods or products are high-value, you need to create a business persona that says “welcome, look what we can help you achieve”.
People don’t like hidden agendas. Social media is your opportunity to show who you really are. Show your offices. Show your store front. Show your staff doing whatever it is they do. People like to feel they’ve found a company that they ‘get’ … social media lets you play into that emotion.
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