Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Small and Large Businesses

The Use of Social media has been defined by some as the modern means of communication and due to the large growth of social sites from Friendster to facebook and MySpace to Twitter, statistics show that social networking is more than just a passing phase but a phenomenon that has come to stay. Just recently, facebook published that it had reached the billion mark of users on its platform while Twitter boasted of over a 100 million users. ecommerce data entry inputting large volumes of data into databases or spreadsheets for the aim of record-keeping or analysis. Properly analyzing these figures would show you that a sixth of the world’s population use Facebook while a tenth use Twitter, Reddit and Instagram to stay connected to their friends and world events.

We have been talking numbers and individuals using social media platforms and most small and large business owners may be asking how the above stats relate to business organizations and how can its use directly translate into making their businesses more profitable.

Social Media Marketing and its Business Benefits

• A less Expensive option:- Social networking has since leveled the advertising playing ground for small business due to the cheap cost of marketing your brand on a social platform. No longer do you need to raise thousands of dollars to place adverts on your cities newspaper which costs roughly $500 for a quarter page or through the more costly traditional means (prime time adverts on cable costs approximately $5000 per 30seconds while radio advert cost falls between $200-$1000).

Your business can eliminate these costs by following the trends and providing valuable information about your business on social media sites which can help you amass a large customer base in the long run for next to nothing.

• A Wider Audience:- While your average small business is concerned about conquering a neighborhood, district or city, the average large business organization focuses its advertising campaigns worldwide in a bid to attract a world wide audience and branding for their business. An example of a large businesses organization that has benefited from social networking is Nike (the American sportswear giant) which has leveraged the social media through their personal accounts and sponsored athletes to successfully manage its world wide appeal.

• Direct Customer Relations:- Social media monitoring is the best way for both small and large business organizations to directly get in touch with their customer base to receive both criticism and reviews about their practices. This information can then be incorporated into your market research and services to help you cater to the direct service needs of your customer base. A quick example of a large business that employs social media to receive feedback on their latest products is Apple, who provides the public with reviews of their products through social media sites and also receives major feedback and reviews directly from users of their products.

• Measurable Results:- It can be argued that the effectiveness of traditional advertising cannot really be measured for there are neither tools nor parameters for measuring their effectiveness while the effectiveness of a social media marketing campaign can easily be measured with analytical tools, feedback and the number of people you attract to your social media accounts. Small business owners can instantly get results on the marketing approach that the public favorably reacts to through the number of likes and retweets of a particular marketing subject.

It is never too late to sell your services and products online. For small and enormous businesses we offer a seamless, integrated marketing solution. from website design, Statistics Training, branding, strategy, social media, and digital marketing, take this advantage and register your business organization on the major social networks today.

Patricia Dolan is Senior Content Strategist at Business Promoted, a leading digital marketing firm based in Sarasota, Florida. Patricia received her BS degree in mass communication from University of Virginia.