4 Business Benefits Of Using Social Media
By WBR
Whether you love or hate social media, using it strategically can uncover a goldmine for you and your business.
If you are not leveraging social media for your business you are massively missing out.
Social media statistics for 2020 show that:
- There are 48 million active social media users in the UK (67 per cent of the UK population).
- 39 million of these users access social media on their mobile devices.
- The average UK user spends 110 minutes on social media per day (that’s almost TWO hours).
If you’re not an avid fan of social media already, the good news is that you can forget hours of endless scrolling that leaves you overwhelmed and frustrated. Instead, see it as a powerful tool that will support your business to grow. At WBR we are huge advocates of leveraging the power of social media to grow your personal brand and build communities that want to buy from you.
Here are our favourite top four business benefits of using social media:
- It helps you build awareness
When your social media posts pop up frequently, consumers will think of you when they need the product or service you offer. Maintaining a consistent presence is the fastest and most cost-effective way of boosting your visibility and reaching a larger audience; both of which build brand awareness.
- Generate leads and boost sales
With the right content marketing you can use social media to generate leads and boost sales. It can increase traffic to your website; the more quality content you share the more inbound traffic you will likely receive. Without any content marketing or social media what are the chances of someone finding your website? They need to be led to it.
Social media is a great avenue for growth and, as many businesses discovered during the lockdown, without a social media presence your bricks and mortar business can quickly be both out of sight and out of mind.
- You can optimise your content marketing and let people get to know you
Most people dislike direct sales; instead social media enables you to share awesome content so that people get to know, like and trust you, and over time potentially become paying customers.
At WBR we can help you to repurpose your content (books, blogs, podcasts) and share it effectively on social media channels. Consider social media as being the top of your sales funnel; when you give people a taste of your products and services they have the opportunity to decide if you, and what you offer, are right for them (without a social media presence, how will you reach them?).
- Use social media to learn about your competitors
Social media is a useful way to learn about the industry that you’re in and gain insights into your target market (and you don’t even have to go to their premises!). Use it to find out what services your competitors offer. What can you learn from it? How would you do those things differently (or better)? You have the opportunity to look at their social media posts and content and learn what helps to engage your ideal client. Social media is also a space where people are encouraged to share their voice so you can learn from the instances where your target audience is reactively negative.
10-second challenge
Go and take a sneaky peek at your competitors’ social media and identify three things you can learn from. Come on over to the Facebook group and share!
PS – if you really don’t want to invest more time in social media consider utilising our personal branding virtual assistant team. They can do all the geeky stuff so that you can focus on your own zone of genius.
5 Time-Saving Tools You’ll Instantly Fall In Love With
Ever wished you could quickly find the right easy-to-use tools to support you and your business without spending hours getting to grips with advanced tech?
When you (or your personal branding virtual assistant) have the know-how at your disposal you can create sophisticated templates and designs that help you stand head and shoulders above your competitors.
There is no one size fits all when it comes to planning and creating your content but we’re sharing some of WBR’s in-house secrets so that you can drive your brand and business forward.
Here are five of our go-to tools.
Otter turns your voice conversations into smart notes. You can use it to record a conversation (with permission) or talk to it directly and it will provide you with a transcript that you can retain or easily share with others. You can refer to the content to write blogs, book chapters or create social media graphics (or why not use the audio as a podcast?).
Otter is versatile, easy to use and will save you hours of effort. You can listen to the audio and simultaneously read the transcript if any parts are unclear but, here’s one really important tip for you; enunciate well and speak as clearly as possible or you will find the odd blooper!
There are free and paid versions available so check out what suits you best.
2) Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a fantastic customer relationship management (CRM) system that enables you to manage and stay connected to your subscribers. It’s a creative way to email your message to everyone on your list or segregate parts of the community based on their engagement or purchase history.
You can access and personalise Mailchimp’s templates so they match your brand.
There are free and paid versions available so it’s a great option if you’re new to email marketing and want to begin to nurture your community.
3) Buffer
There will be times where you wish you could batch your social media posts and have them magically appear while you sleep, go on holiday or pursue other business opportunities and Buffer does exactly that. You can schedule your social media posts at specific times when you know your target audience will most likely be online.
4) Canva
It’s said that content is king and so at WBR we say that Canva is queen when it comes to creating beautiful graphics and content (quotes, infographics etc) for social media.
There are free templates (for Instagram posts, Facebook posts, ebooks, presentations) you can adapt or use for inspiration; the world is your oyster.
If you’ve looked at the first four of our recommended tools and found yourself wondering what sort of content your target audience wants you to share using these fantastic tools then AnswerThePublic holds the key.
It will help you overcome mental blocks and draw inspiration from the actual questions people are asking search engines Google or Bing. When you type in financial advice (for example) it would show you the keywords and questions people have historically searched for.
Use this information to create blogs, podcasts, social media posts or other relevant content around the topics your audience is researching; this also means your content is SEO optimised!
When you use AnswerThePublic you will save yourself hours of time second guessing what your ideal clients want to know. Use Otter to transcribe your audio, Canva to create beautiful social media posts, Buffer to schedule them and Mailchimp to share with your community via email.
We hope you love these tools as much as we do! And if you know that being involved in the social media intricacies of your business is too time consuming for you (or you don’t enjoy it) then drop me (Jenina) an email because we have a team of expert personal brand virtual assistants (PBVAs) who can give you as much or as little support as you need so your professional message is landing in front of the right people at the right time, whether you’re on a device or not.
10-second takeaway
Check out one of the great time-saving tools we shared and let us know what you think, or if you have a favourite that we haven’t mentioned come and share it in the Facebook group.
Are you ready to take your personal brand to the next level and write a book, start a blog or podcast? Check out our brand content strategy session; it’s a sure-fire way to hone your vision and build momentum for your brand and business in 2022.
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