Over the past few years, social media marketing has been growing in leaps and bounds with a higher than expected ROI. As odd as this may sound, any business not spending advertising dollars in the social arena is losing a huge portion of a potential market base, but for very good and irrefutable reasons. If you are yet to take the plunge into social media, here are 10 undeniable reasons why people use social media and you will be surprised at just how many of these reasons can directly impact your business’ profitability.
Social Media Trends Are Evolving
Before looking at those 10 reasons why people engage in social media, it’s important to take a look at a growing trend. Just a year ago, polls indicated that most people logged onto social media to stay in touch with friends and family. They were actively involved in a dialogue. However, the number of people now responding to polls indicate that while they still want to stay in touch, they are less likely to engage in conversation.
This is considered to be a passive use of social platforms. The growing trend toward passive participation has evolved and now the majority of social media users indicate that they are more likely to follow the news, entertainment, and yes, merchants and businesses they are interested in. As a side note here, it’s interesting how a growing number of businesses are now hiring social media marketing experts like Social Media Daily to post regularly on their business social pages and to respond to comments where applicable.
Using These Reasons to Design a Social Marketing Campaign
2018 surveys indicate that most users are more likely to be passively involved in social media. This is why businesses can use passive networking to expand their market base and significantly increase profitability. It only takes getting a handle on why people are using social media in order to design an effective social networking marketing campaign. See which of the following 10 reasons you can capitalize on.
1. Staying in Touch
For two years running, staying in touch has been the number one reason why people use social media, but as detailed above, users are now simply scanning what their friends are doing rather than being actively involved in conversations. This could have a huge impact on businesses looking for positive customer reviews. After all, if a product is well-received by your friends, you are likely to give it a try as well when in the market for products or businesses in that niche.
2. Keeping Up with Current Event and News
This became especially prominent during the days leading up to and after the latest presidential election. Social media literally exploded with posts favoring one candidate or the other and social platforms are still alive with heated disputes over the current state of affairs in the nation. Here is where a business would be wise to stay out of the political arena because you are trying to capture a wide audience. You never know who you might offend with your political views.
3. Filling Spare Time
Whereas a year ago the average user would probably have filled spare time by chatting away with friends, they are now more likely to scan for something entertaining. Some will follow news and current events while others will simply see what everyone else has been up to.
4. Following the Crowd
Many people responded that they joined one social platform or another simply because that’s what their friends were doing. It wasn’t necessarily that they wanted to become actively involved; they just wanted to fit in with others and so they created a social profile to follow the crowd.
5. A Means to Network
Here again is another way in which businesses can capitalize on social media. This is especially significant if you are a B2B enterprise. Social networks like LinkedIn are able to put businesses together with their peers or anyone within their industry. Using social media as a business networking tool is one of the quickest ways to grow your list of contacts within your industry.
6. Looking for Laughs
After a long, hard day at work or school, everyone needs to unwind. Just look at how quickly memes and funny videos go viral and you can see just how important it is to provide a bit of humor in your content. Obviously, you need to use good taste in the humor you post, but anything that brings a smile to a potential customer’s face is sure to make your business memorable. Everyone loves a good laugh, don’t they?
7. Sharing Media – Photos and Videos
This one is self-explanatory. Here is where we post pictures of our pets, our kids, our latest toys and even photos of our favorite hobbies. Savvy businesses use media wisely to introduce new products or bring faces to the names of people within their organization. Never underestimate the power of visual content!
8. An Outlet for Opinions
Here is where you need to be a bit careful. While many satisfied customers will post a positive comment about a product or service they are happy with, you will find a large number of those posting about their discontent. Some businesses use social media for reputation management after a bad review and this is something you may wish to consider as well if you ever have a need to counteract negative press.
9. A Way to Meet New People
Social media is a wonderful place to meet new people with common interests and a growing number of users have stated that this is where they met their current partner. With the Internet reaching the entire globe, many have stated that it’s fun to dally with others who will probably never become a serious romantic interest. It’s just fun to meet and talk to new people wherever they might be.
10. Researching Products and Businesses
And here is the big one! If you are looking to grow your business exponentially, you can’t avoid the active use of social media. More people seek new products, services and businesses in general online than through any other way and of all online platforms, social media is the most effective. The key point is that you must stay actively involved. Regular posts are vital and if you haven’t got the time to check your social sites several times a day, it pays to hire social media marketing pros to keep the content alive.
So then, as you can clearly see, today’s business will be losing a huge portion of their market share if they aren’t active on at least a few social platforms. If you don’t know where to start, just take a look at why people use social media and it will become clear how to use those reasons to your advantage. Bear in mind that the world has gone digitally social, so you should too.
