Top Reasons Your Business Needs Social Media

Whether you like social media or you love it, if you want to run a successful business, you need it. No matter how big or small your company is, it should be an essential part of your business marketing strategy and feature in your company’s goals and future projections. Social media has so many advantages, from helping you to create awareness of your product or brand to putting a human element to a faceless company. There are billions of potential customers out there just waiting to discover you and your product, and the more methods you have for people to discover you, the better it is all around. It can feel daunting at first thinking of setting up social media, yet it is something that isn’t worth putting off until tomorrow. No matter if your business is a shop selling homemade products or a chartered accountants, there are always ways you can better yourself, get yourself seen, and build up a strong client base. You don’t have to use every social media platform out there. With Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and TikTok among the most popular, it is important to select those that are the best for you and those you are trying to target. Here are six reasons to show you just how important social media is for your business.

To build awareness of your brand

Social media is vital for building awareness of your brand and showcasing yourself to potential future customers. After all, if people don’t know about your business, they won’t be able to use you. By utilizing social media, you can soon reach a much wider audience than just by your website and word of mouth alone. By creating and putting out unique and engaging content, it can soon gain traction and send a message to consumers that you are a company they want to work with or spend their money on. Focus on the social media channel that is right for you, if you are a more formal brand, for example, Linkedin is best, whereas if you aim at a young and tech savvy audience, something like TikTok or Instagram is good.

To put a face to your company

People like to buy from people. By having a social media presence, people feel like they are actually interacting with and speaking to a person instead of just emailing a generic info@ or looking through a website. By adding some personality and humaneness to a business, you are much more likely for people to want to work with you or buy your products. This face also adds authenticity to a brand. With so many companies out there on the market, including those that might be less legitimate, a strong social media presence helps to hone in on the fact that you are a trustworthy and reliable business that people can talk to and work with.

To encourage engagement

Sometimes, the simplest of social media posts can create high engagement levels and get you seen by more people. By continually engaging with your existing customers and potential customers, you can build a rapport and a great reputation that can lead to more sales. Sometimes, the simplest of social media posts can create high engagement levels and get you seen by more people. By continually engaging with your existing customers and potential customers, you can build a rapport and a great reputation that can lead to more sales. Social media is great for instigating interaction with customers, building a relationship, and increasing the loyalty of those who shop with you. By giving away snippets such as behind the scenes videos, sneak peeks of new products, or office tours, they will feel special and want to engage with you.

To provide support for your customers

If you have done something right or brought out a product that everyone loves, social media is great for seeing that. Likewise, if customers have complaints, social media is the first place they will go to contact you in the hope of a much quicker response. By being on social media, you can quickly rectify any situation and ensure your customer feels valued and well looked after. In comparison, an email reply can take several days and leave them feeling frustrated and annoyed with your brand. 

These are just a few ways that your business needs social media to grow and succeed. Be sure to do your research and speak to an expert who can advise you on the best practices and also run your account for you if you find you don’t have the time.

Why Your Business Needs To Implement A Community Platform

If you want your business to stand out you need to set yourself apart from your competitors. This year has been difficult for many business owners who have been trying to navigate through the chaos and adapt the brand to meet the needs of customers. One thing that has been crucial for brands during these uncertain times is the need to stay connected to customers. 

For the most part, everything has been up in the air, and communication between a business and its consumers is one way to ensure that both parties are on the same page. Some brands have chosen to stay connected to their customers through social media platforms or via their website, but there is another way you can keep in touch and this is through implementing a community platform. 

What is an online community platform?

An online community platform allows you to connect with your audience anywhere, at any time. It allows you to manage a space where open discussions with like-minded people who have joined your community can take place. Whether it’s to come up with new ideas, use as a private social networking tool, distribute any news or updates, or to just increase customer engagement. 

How is a community platform beneficial for your business?

With community platform software there are a host of tools and features that can help increase and maintain engagement. You can build a successful community through push notifications, direct messaging, likes, comments, live streams, and polls. This can be beneficial for your brand as it will give you a better understanding of what your audience likes, wants, and needs. 

There are tools available that can help you moderate your community and you can use analytics to help it grow. You can brand your online community to suit your business logo, fonts, and colours. Community platforms are GDPR-compliant so you don’t have to fret about breaching data, as you will own all of it. 

More brands are likely to set up their own community platform as a way to stay connected to their consumers. Another benefit of a community platform is that if a customer has a query or an issue it’s more likely to be resolved quicker via this method than telephone or email.

Although businesses will continue to use social media for engagement and brand awareness, the use of things like Facebook Groups is likely to decrease, with people switching over to community platforms instead. This eliminates problems with privacy and security and the control of data. 

What features are available?

The great thing about community platforms is that it’s similar to social media channels but you are more in control and can make it a safe space for you and your customers. There is a range of features that are useful for your business. 

You can use the analytics feature to gain further insights into your audience and allow you to get to know them better. This is useful for brands that are looking to update a product or service based on the needs of their customers and can help them improve their engagement. 

There’s a poll feature that you can implement to gain a better understanding of your customers. You can put polls up to find out what it about your business they like, areas you could improve on, or what they’d like to see from your brand going forward. 

You can create unlimited private and public groups that can segment your audience by their interests or where they’re located and members of the community can follow and engage with one another if they have similar interests. 

There’s also a content library feature that enables you to upload and store assets and share them with your audience. So if you have videos, images, or blog posts that your audience may find useful, they can find them all in one space. 

To keep your community safe, there are also moderation tools where you can verify members, report people should you need to, as well as shadowban members. This type of feature allows you to ensure that your community is well protected. 

Is a community platform right for your business?

Your business can benefit from implementing a community platform, and it is one way to get your brand to stand out against your competitors if you are putting effort into creating a tight-knit community with your audience. Building a community can increase leads and improve brand loyalty. There are a host of benefits as to why this may be a great option for your business, but only you can decide if this is the right direction to take your brand.

Solid Foundations: Making a Living in the Blogging World

It’s not just about guaranteeing that your blog stands out. Ultimately, the goal for every entrepreneur, blogger or business owner is to make their product stand out, but it’s about ensuring that bloggers and entrepreneurs can earn a decent crust from their work. Making a living in the blogging world is something that we would all like to achieve. But when we consider the overarching goal, we can break it down into significantly small components that will help us earn a living. It’s not necessarily about blogging by itself, but about a handful of these different components that can keep you afloat in a financial sense. Let’s dive in and show you how you can do this.

Financial Fallback Options

Let’s get this out of the way: building a blog requires a significant investment of time and money. During the initial stages where you are trying to build up your blog, it might not be sensible to leap from your full-time job until there is a regular income. But if you are looking to make a good living blogging, you’ve got to start thinking about your financial fallback options. There are a wide variety of methods to earn money on the side. When you are considering building a blog, you may want to start thinking about other ways to monetize yourself. Freelance services, as well as microtasks, and even investing can help you to diversify your money making efforts. There are a wide variety of specialists out there that can help you with the latter. True ECN brokers can help you navigate the stock market, but you have to remember that getting to a point where you are making a significant amount of money by investing can take some time. It’s more important than anything to take baby steps. When you start to look at every little task that you can complete to make money, whether this is doing online surveys or even matched betting, all of these things will add up to a decent paycheck. But it’s important to get organised. Your blog is the priority, so think about scheduling these little components around the priority.

Selling Your Name

Once you start to diversify your money making efforts, you can truly focus on establishing who you are. There’s a wide variety of approaches that you can do to guarantee an income. Online courses and workshops are one of the best ways for you to sell your blog. There’s also books or ebooks, but when you start to diversify your efforts and think about what it takes to make money from blogging, this is when you can start to go towards consulting and coaching or selling your freelance services. This is something that requires a lot of experience behind you. But also, you need to have something unique that you are selling. Speaking gigs is something that can help when the blog takes off, but at the initial stages, you’ve got to sell your services. This means that you are promoting yourself through your blog, but you are also showing what you are capable of doing. This means you’ve got to think about your own unique skills and sell them while also giving yourself a sturdy foundation.