Social Media & Your Business: Why It Matters in 2016

Does your business really need social media? Are you really asking this question in 2016? If you are, then you need to see a few statistics that will convince you once and for all that your business does not just need an effective social media marketing campaign, it may not be able to survive without it.

74% of consumers say that social media drives their purchasing decisions. Unless your customers are somehow that other 26%, these are your customers or potential customers that you are letting slip through your fingers. This is only the beginning. Let’s look a bit closer about why social media is so important to business today.

If you, as an individual, tell someone that you are not on Facebook, you are going to receive some pretty strange looks. But if your business is not on Facebook, I’ll tell you right now that you are crazy. In just the last 5 years, Facebook has become the #1 site visited by consumers. And they don’t just visit it once a day and then click away, they are on it many times a day and clicking away on whatever draws their interest. Are your ads and attention-grabbing posts among this sea of facts, inspiration, clickbait and fun quizzes? They should be.

Social Media & SEO

If you have a website, you’ve undoubtedly heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by now. Search engines like Google use a complex algorithm to determine whether you appear on the 1^st page or page 10 — which no one visits, BTW — when they perform a search. People use SEO strategies to appear on that sought after 1^st page. Did you know that shares of your engaging content on Facebook are one of the greatest influencers of where you rank in searches? If not, you do now, so use it to your advantage.

In 2016, 6000 Tweets are sent per second, which amounts to over 500 million tweets a day. People are tweeting about everything from their favorite Nashville star to what they had for breakfast. But what should be more important to you is that more that half of twitter users very regularly share their favorite brands’ benefits and experiences. This is like hiring a multi-million person team to promote your brand and Twitter users do it for free. This is a marketing team that you should want to hire.

Video Marketing on Social Media

People love to watch videos, even ones without the fancy Hollywood special effects. Today, YouTube has over one billion users, which is almost 1 in 3 of everyone who uses the Internet. Hundreds of millions of hours of video are watched and often shared. You can tap into this customer base by developing must-see content.

This is how successful businesses today are reaching customers and maintaining their business. When your business provides helpful, interesting, clickable content through social media, you too can experience the power of social media. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming. When you put the right strategies and expertise into your marketing campaigns, you can achieve results that you can see and feel, as they impact your bottom line. So, start increasing your social media presence today.