Time for the question on every business owner’s lips: what value is social media bringing to my business? How can I measure its worth and put a monetary value on it? Before we start playing the numbers game, time to look a little closer at the social media bottom line.
Truth is, you can no longer focus on just the financial benefits. Social media marketing brings so many positives to a business, including brand awareness, positive sentiment and advocacy; put simply, it can’t be ignored for much longer.
Understanding the value of a social media like will help you make the most of it
The moment your business joins a social media community, each and every social media like, share or follower plays a significant role in how you shape your relationships with your customers. By simply listening to your customers, your social media presence can help you determine what people are looking for and create content that fulfils their needs and gains you lots of those lovely social media likes.
It’s a win-win
Dontcha just love it when a social media like aka follower becomes an advocate for your organisation? Such a follower takes care of your customer reviews and complaints on your behalf. They offer solutions and spread the good word. Through listening (both manually and using software) you will get ideas for new product development and also understand more about your competition’s offering too.
The data that matters
There are various metrics which are worth understanding, e.g. website visits, page views, repeat visits, conversion rates and sales levels. What makes measuring social media activity so difficult isn’t a lack of data. It’s identifying which pieces of data matter eg customer behaviour, purchase conversions, sign-ups etc.
Time to call the professionals in
The Alimeter Group’s Social Media ROI Cookbook gives a good account of how daunting it is for businesses to connect a social media like to their business objectives. Lack of analytics expertise, poor tools and analytical approaches are some of the challenges businesses face. Those are the reasons why many businesses choose to hire social media marketing experts (Ed’s note: we’re free for a chat when you are).
It’s not just for your friends
Today’s social network is no longer just a place to keep in touch with friends – it’s a new way of experiencing the world. For example, news spreads faster on social media than on any news network and we’ve all seen and experienced the power of a viral post.
Here today, hair tomorrow
To give you an idea how to make the use of social media to your advantage completely, let’s have a look at this example from luxyhair.com. This business organisation started just a few years ago by Alex and Mimi Ikonn, two young entrepreneurs who were completely broke and decided to start a hair extension company. They decided to use YouTube to show how to use their products and from nothing, they grew into a multi-million dollar company. with over three million subscribers on YouTube and 300k social media likes on Facebook. Nice work indeed.
How have they managed to achieve this? By building and engaging with their community. It’s at the very heart of every social media like.
