Whether you have a personal social media account or a business account, social media has many purposes. What exactly those purposes are depends on how you choose to use the social media sites.
When using social media for personal use, the main function is to reach friends and family, even when they are far away. Want to get updates on how your friends and family are doing, or maybe to message them or call them through the social media’s messenger platform, in both cases it’s quick and easy through social media. You can also stay up-to-date with current organizations you are following. You can find out about an upcoming event or a new product that is launching soon in a matter of seconds. According to 140+ Social Media Statistics, the other reasons we use social media are: to find funny or entertaining content, fill spare time, research or find products, keep up with news, meet new people, and share images or our opinions with others. Also, the average social media user has 8.3 different social media accounts. It’s crazy to think about all the different content individuals digest through the average 8 different sites they are browsing daily.
It is quite obvious that social media has many benefits for those with personal accounts. So, how does it benefit an organization? Just think about this, Facebook currently has an average of 2.5 billion monthly active users worldwide; Youtube has 2 billion users worldwide, and Instagram has around 1 billion users. The earth only has a population of around 7.8 billion people. That means that about half of our world population is on some form of social media, whether it’s watching videos on Youtube or scrolling through their feed on Facebook. According to 23 Benefits of Social Media for Businesses, the benefits of an organization being on social media are quite rewarding. Are you a newer business? Social media is a great way to build brand awareness for your organization. Trying to get more people to visit your site and browse your products? Again social media allows you to reach so many new potential customers. Not only will these potential customers browse through your products, they may just end up purchasing some as well. Social media is, on its own, one of the cheapest ways to advertise your organization to a big chunk of our population.
However, for an organization, it’s not all about selling and advertising your product. There is another purpose to it. What? Do you mean, there’s more to it than reaching thousands of new potential customers? Yes, there most definitely is. By being on social media, you are able to interact with your consumers and build those life-long customer relationships. Don’t be shy! Go on and get involved with your audience and engage them with regular posts about what’s going on in your organization, chat with your followers, play some games, excite them with sweepstakes, post recipes, blogs, or tutorial videos. The possibilities are endless when it comes to engaging your consumers through social media.
Another benefit of social media is finding new partners to help expand awareness and reach of our organization. This may be your consumers that spread the joy of the most recent product they bought from you, or their great (or not so great) experience with your organization’s customer service. But consumers are not your only options for partnership. Another, rarely untapped, potential partner is bloggers (See: 7 ways blogs benefit businesses). Let’s say that you are working for an organization that sells cosmetics. Reaching out to a blogger that tries, and blogs about different types of cosmetics can benefit your organization. They may have followers that aren’t being reached from the social media platform you are currently using. These followers may just trust that blogger’s opinion enough to go out, and try your product as well. This brings more consumers to your social media page, or website; broadening your consumer base. But that isn’t all! Your organization can also connect with other organizations. You may be interested in doing a campaign with a not-for-profit organization, or want to partner with another business that sells products that compliment your products. These connections can happen fairly easily and quickly on social media, and will only further help you in building your consumer base.
All in all, whether you are looking to join social media for personal reasons or as an organization, the selection of platforms is quite vast. Choose what’s best for you and start building your community of friends, family, and consumers; and watch the magic happen!
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