The answer is YES.
According to a survey carried out by American company Cone “93 percent of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media. In fact, 56 percent of users feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.”
Whilst social media sites have been around for quite some time now, it’s only recently businesses have started to see what benefits they hold. Initially seen as a fad, social media sites are evolving and showing no signs of going away. How can a business make good use of this though?
By combining these new ‘low cost’ media channels with your existing marketing you have what is an extremely effective and powerful way of communicating directly to your customers.
People are communicating online now more than ever and somewhere on the net your customers will be talking about your business, so providing a channel in which you can join in the conversation could prove invaluable. Give your customers a place where they can communicate with you and they will.
Online marketing gives you the chance to listen to your customers, build better customer relationships, promote your products and services and reach out to new customers. Used effectively the benefits are huge.
Facebook and Twitter can be used as fantastic free marketing tools to promote your company. Using these sites as a communication tool can give you instant feedback for your business, that if required can be acted upon almost immediately. Obviously there is a danger that if your customer service isn’t up to scratch then the feedback may not be what you are looking for. However this feedback may be what saves your business from not being here in 12 months time.
Which sites should you be using though? There are a lot of them out there and it can be a tad confusing.
Facebook
Facebook being arguably the biggest is a definite. By simply setting up a group for your business you can then post regular updates, videos of your products and services, listen to customer feedback, and send newsletters for free to your entire group. You could effectively cut down on the costs of email newsletters you may be sending using other paid for services.
Forward thinking technology giants Apple have made great use of Facebook, creating a page informing their 1,343,978 ‘fan’s’ of a range of new topics from latest itunes releases to holidays offers. Importantly though they give their fans the option to ask questions and obtain answers relating to any Apple concerns.
Twitter
Twitter on the other hand gives you the option to release snippets of information about new products, services, exciting changes in your business or whatever you feel the need to inform your customers of. It works best by releasing bite size chunks of information regularly, which could be an excellent way of marketing a teaser campaign for new product releases.
British Airways have adopted Twitter as a way to inform their customers of a range of different topics such as special deals, important information about Terminal 5 and from one twitter post just to wish everyone a happy St. Georges Day. Having just adopted Twitter recently British Airways currently have 1696 followers. That’s 1696 customers they can market to costing them absolutely nothing at all.
Youtube
Youtube pretty much dominates the market online for video uploading and has undeniably had a massive impact in quite a short space of time. Acquiring a Youtube channel would give your business a platform to engage with your customers using video.
Myspace
At the other end of the spectrum there is Myspace. Possibly not a site that corporate companies would want to use, but for new and edgy, youthful businesses Myspace is a fantastic channel in which to promote your company to a large audience.
