Social Media and Business Profits

Social Media and Business Profits

Today’s society is all about social media, and quick connections to others and businesses. According to a report from eMarketer: “nearly one in four people worldwide will use social networks in 2013” (eMarketer, 2013), with this trend rising over the next four years. In seeing the rise in usage, it is no wonder why companies are turning more to social media for marketing and sales. First look at what social media can do for a company. Using social media in a business can provide advertisement, communication, feedback, and profit to a business with little to no out-of-pocket expenses for the company.

Social media marketing is becoming the mainstream marketing for businesses, with Facebook, Twitter, microblogging, forums, video, and photo sharing. A poll done in 2013 shows that, “66% of small businesses are maintaining or increasing spending on digital marketing” (AT&T, 2014). This number shows how important social media is becoming in today’s business. There is also a consensus between marketers, of 90% surveyed agreed with the statement “Is social media important to your business?” and 66% of small business owners strongly agreed with the statement (Geho, 2012). With the rising use of social media in today’s society businesses need to jump onto the social network and use it to their advantage. Sign up for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube any media that they can to promote their business to whole new society and generation. Social media today is a fast way for companies to advertise and reach millions in minutes if not seconds, compared to radio or TV, which they are only advertising on every few minutes. With TV and Radio their advertisement is only seen or heard every few minutes, with social media their advertisement are seen every time someone opens a page or does a search. Remember timing is everything, when looking at how to get the most they can from social media time can become a critical factor. Also, see if they can do a survey of how many of the “likes” on the page are actual customers of the business. Knowing how many of the “likes” are customers helps give the idea of how many you are reaching along with where the main source is coming from. If it is a local business and needs local customers they need to find out how many of those “likes” live close. If they are not close by then how are they going to be customers? Are they selling products online on a website? If not then the customers need to be close by to get to the business. They may need to look at how they are promoting themselves and change a few things.

Now think about how the social media plays into the ROI (Return of Investment) in the business. To do that there has to be a measurement done during the course of use. Making sure to track every dollar spent and earned using social media will give a record and graph on the ROI. Special K Challenge