In this day and age, nearly every business out there has at least one social media account, and most have two, three, or even four. Many businesses keep up with these accounts well, posting often and engaging with customers over social media. However, this is an incredibly time-consuming practice that might leave business owners wondering if it’s really worthwhile. 

The answer? Yes—creating and keeping up with your social media profiles is absolutely worthwhile. Not only that, it’s actually worth it to invest your time and energy into maintaining multiple social media accounts. 

Still not convinced this is something you want to devote time to? Check out these 8 reasons every business should maintain social media accounts. 

Create Brand Awareness

Building a brand that people know and recognize is incredibly important. Social media makes this easier than ever. Not only will you get a chance to present yourself to your audience every single day, you’ll also have the opportunity to do so in creative ways, making it easy to make your mark. 

Posting often, interacting with others, and creating shareable posts are just some of the ways you can ensure your brand is presented to the right audience on a regular basis.

Ensuring that these posts and interactions are helpful, thoughtful, and memorable—and making sure to post on a regular basis—will help keep your brand on the minds of your audience. This helps ensure that potential customers think of you first when a need arises for a product or service offered by your business.

Connect with Your Audience

It might not always seem like it, but interacting with others is a very important part of keeping up with your social media presence. Commenting on posts, replying to those who interact with your posts, and making sure you answer questions in a timely manner are all important. 

Doing these things boosts your posts up in the timelines of followers. These actions also help establish your brand as responsive and helpful—two qualities people tend to seek out (whether consciously or subconsciously) when choosing favorite brands and businesses. 

Additionally, interacting with consumers on social media helps humanize your business. This in turn helps improve sales, as people prefer doing business with individuals rather than companies. Keep this in mind when posting, and try to keep things polite but casual rather than uptight and overly professional. 

Improve Customer Service

Using social media to communicate with customers and followers provides you with the opportunity to use these platforms as a way to improve your customer service. Offering assistance through social media makes your business more approachable and helps improve your relationship with customers. This is especially true if the communication you do through social media is efficient and uncomplicated. 

Considering the fact that customers are more likely to buy from a business they know and trust, offering this kind of quick, approachable, and friendly customer service is sure to help your brand grow. 

Gather Data 

Another big benefit of using social media to grow your business is the ability to gather data as you build and interact with your audience. 

Monitor the activity on your social media pages to see the thoughts and feelings of your customer base, use tools to analyze the demographics of your followers, and pay attention to the types of posts that interest and excite your audience. You can even use your social media pages to set up polls if you wish to gather customer opinions on a specific topic. 

Increase Website Traffic

Posting on social media also has the potential to increase your website traffic. Obviously, people are more likely to visit your site if your brand is on their mind, and that is one way your social media presence might boost website traffic. 

That said, using your social media accounts to promote blog posts, products, special events, and sales can also significantly increase traffic. This is especially true if you make these types of posts interesting enough to be shared with others, a tactic that will bring in new audience members, followers, and potentially even customers. 

Improve Search Engine Optimization

Another way social media can help boost website traffic is through improved search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is important because it helps improve your page rankings, bumping your pages up in the list of results for the keywords related to your business and driving traffic to your business website. 

In theory, social media doesn’t directly increase search engine rankings. That said, according to Social Media Examiner, more than 58% of marketers see improved search engine rankings after using social media for a year or more. 

To see this improvement, you will need to create quality posts that integrate your desired keywords. Sharing blogs, infographics, case studies, and other shareable content is ideal, as it encourages others to interact with what you are posting. 

Promote Products and Services

Obviously, social media presents the perfect opportunity to promote your products or services. Not only that, it gives you a chance to tell consumers why they should use your product or service, and show them how it can help them through storytelling with photos, videos, and of course, words. 

Sharing your products in this way helps consumers see how the product or service your brand has to offer can help them in their own day-to-day lives. This is especially true when current and past customers comment with their own positive experiences with your products or services. 

Save Money

Finally, we simply must mention the fact that maintaining social media accounts for your business can actually save you money. You see, social media marketing is a very effective form of advertising. In fact, it may even remove the need to spend money on other types of advertising. Since using social media is almost always 100% free, this makes this type of marketing one of the most cost-effective advertisement options there is. 

Ready to create and maintain social media accounts for your brand? We’d love to help you get the most out of this investment. Contact us today to learn what we can do for you!