Why is social media important?

Social media has grown at great speeds with more people using social media channels regularly, Facebook alone has over 1.2 billion monthly active users, Twitter over one billion registered users and Instagram over 300 million.

It is an effective way of communicating with a large audience where you can share ideas, services and advice to the people you want to target as well as connect to real people and industry professionals alike. With a good PR strategy, social media can be beneficial for a company of any size for the following reasons:

• Get your message to the consumer faster
  You can create content in a range of different media such as blogs, videos or imagery, and share it immediately on a variety of platforms.
  
  
• Talk to your customers directly
  The insight that you can gather from listening to people's voices and opinions on Social Media is invaluable, it can easily highlight the areas that need improvement as well as generate interest from potential new clients on the back of good reviews.
  
  
• Cost effective
  Social Media offers cost effective advertisement which can be used to grow engagement and brand awareness. It is also a place where you can share opinion pieces, news and blogs for free, which can also help grow the brand awareness. Utilising these tools along with other colleagues around the business sharing posts can go a long way.
  
  
• Search Engine Optimisation
  Believe it or not, Social Media actually influences search ranking. Whilst a post itself on Social Media platforms won't directly contribute to the overall Search Engine Ranking, the shares, likes and comments are vital signs Search Engines use to rank your website. The higher the interaction or the bigger the increase is in traffic to the site will also increase the websites overall "Domain Authority" which will help in improving the overall search ranking too. The increased visibility to those that might not have heard about your business can also mean a potential increase in organic traffic.
  
  
• Human touch
  Sharing opinion pieces, Christmas party or Charity work photos as well as something else that is more personal to the business, can show followers the people behind the business and give them a real insight into the work that you do as well people that work there.   

Social Media isn't something that will change your business overnight, and you will need to invest a little time to see the real benefits to your business but if you can write one interesting blog, tweet or post, there is the potential for this to be shared throughout the online community to vast numbers - all thanks to your colleagues and other users. 

Find out more about our Social Media service