What Is Social Media Supposed To Do For Your Company?

Today the business world, especially ours, depends a lot on social media, but what is it exactly supposed to be doing for your company? 

Hello, Summerville! Hello, Readers! Welcome to the Creative Consulting blog. We hope you've been doing well, working hard to grow within your business and team, and have had your favorite caffeinated beverage close by the whole time! Anyone who uses social media for their business and who makes it a part of their media and sales strategy put a lot of pressure and responsibility on the shoulders of the apps that were once created by very young nobodies whose products were once called fads. Now the creators and their apps are household names, and a daily part of some of the most important and integral parts of many businesses, and they are the margin line for success for many content creators. However, these powerful apps are still just that. They're apps. They were created to bring people together and to keep them connected. Today, a lot of business and important decisions happen right at our fingertips. Companies can spend countless hours creating content and keeping up to date with all of the social media apps updates and algorithm changes. Hours can be spent tracking your followers, learning about them, and discovering your target audience. It truly is a full-time part of running your business. 

One of the greatest things about social media is the fact that it's free and so accessible to anyone and everyone. Somewhere in between the conception of social media and using it for business, something changed. Something shifted in these apps from their humble beginnings as social tools to becoming some of the key cornerstones in modern business. So many of us expect social media to be the end all be all to make our ideas, companies, and products go viral and to make us millions overnight. While we wish this was always true, that's not the case. Today, we are going to take a step back and talk about what social media is really supposed to do for your business, what your expectations should be.

2020 was a strange plane for all of us to cross and figure out. Everything changed, we all had to adjust, everything was difficult, and we all had to get used to it very quickly. When we all had to spend time away from our friends and loved ones to stay safe, we turned to our electronic devices and apps to keep us connected. This changed our relationship to social media, and this change has raised our expectations on both the consumer and producer side of things. As social media gets closer and closer to providing almost perfect instant gratification with rushed shipping, instant streaming, and a constant flow of information and news, our expectations of the social world are becoming even higher as the days go on. This puts pressure on every aspect of social media, those working behind it and creating it, and those depending on it to help create and maintain a successful business. This has caused a unique brand of pandemic fatigue on the entire social media industry. It had to do its own pandemic pivot, support its followers as they went through an unimaginable global epidemic, and once again switch gears as the world returns to life after a pandemic both online and off. 

Understanding Social Media 

• Let's be honest, social media in business can no longer be treated as a hobby, an option, or as a second thought. Your competitors certainly don't think that way. You might have been fighting tooth and nail, but now it's time to give in. We promise it won't be as painful as you're making it out to be, all you need is a plan. Remember, it's incredibly inexpensive, it's been proven effective many times over, and it's a fast way to reach the world's population with your product, not just your community. To understand what it does for you and what to expect, you need to know what it can do for you. A word to the wise, it is not a George Foreman grill. As much as you might hope it to be, it is not a set it and forget it marketing tool. The key is in the first word of its name, SOCIAL media! To reap the benefits you have to be social too! 
• It is a free tool that gathers your analytics to help understand who your target audience is, when they're the most active online, and what they will respond to and like the most in their content. However, the power in that is how you use this information when creating your content. 
• While it can help get the word out about your business, it is a tool that can help you stay on top of what is going on in your industry at a very fast pace. 
• It is also a safe, discreet, and honest way to keep an eye on your competitors. 
• Who is the most important person you are trying to reach with social media? Your customers! How can you continue to be more appealing to returning and new customers and creating long-lasting relationships? You need to get to know your customers! They get to know a little bit about you every day and with every post, but how much are you getting to know them? Are you paying attention to their questions and feedback? Are you incorporating this information into your products and brand? Are you speaking to the correct audience on your social media platforms and are they listing? 
• Boosting your sales is an incredible part of what social media can do for your company. The more people you can get your product in front of, the more chances more products will sell. However, social media is not your sole sales department or plan. You still have to do legwork too, but social media selling is a very important part of a successful sales strategy. 
• You have created a great brand, and you want it to stay that way. Social media allows you a place to build, enhance, and continue crafting your brand as you learn and grow with the changing fads, pay attention to what consumers want, and while listening to both your fans and critics. 
• No matter how long your company has been around, there will always be someone who still doesn't know who you are. Social media changes all that and naturally, even without a ton of work it will increase awareness for your brand. However, that is not us condoning you not putting in the effort to increase awareness. According to Hootsuite, 60% of Instagram users say they discover new products on the platform. According to Oberlo.com, as of February of this year, there were 1.074 billion users on Instagram, and 60% of them have discovered new products on their pages. Why couldn't yours be one of them? 
• Your brand and your company become much more real and human with the use of social media. While you might have millions of followers and that can be hard to keep up with, they can see who you are as real living people, and not just a product, thanks to social media. It's a creation of a much deeper connection, and your followers have someone to connect to and care for when you show a human side of your company. It allows people to support you, want to buy from you, to help support you, and to tell their friends and family members about you to support you. It is also an option to embrace and show your values and that your product does work and is very real. 
• Social media, when used to its fullest extent, can and will establish you as being a leader and expert in your field and what you do. It gives you, your product, and your brand some very serious authority. Followers and new customers will turn to you and search you out as their go-to provider of information and fact in your industry. This is an amazing tool, but one you have to respect and keep up with. 
• Nurturing social media will allow growth across your whole brand, leading and growing more traffic to your website. Social media a continuous invitation for people to visit and a reminder that everything they are looking for or want from you is waiting for them on your website. It is also a tool that allows potential and future clients to express a low-key and stress-free interest in your brand at their speed and on their terms. This freedom of space and control that you've given to your future audience is a huge comfort that helps generate leads. 

How To Help Your Social Media! Get Out Of It What You Want! 
Social media is a mouthpiece for all the hard work that you and your marketing team have done. It's a tool in your marketing toolbox. A mouthpiece doesn't work without brains behind it, and a hammer won't work without a nail. Social media is a three-part equation; you use it to learn about who you need to sell to, how best to sell to them, you create content based on everything you've learned, and to solve the equation, you post your findings. For extra credit, you need to interact in the social world yourself. What else can you do to optimize your social media so it works as it should? 

• Remember to stay flexible, both the business and social media work will continue to constantly evolve and you need to keep up with that! You need to not only be okay with staying flexible but to be able to change and go in a different direction very quickly. 
• Focus on engagement, not just getting and improving how you're getting, but also giving it. 
• Don't just create content for the sake of creating it. Create content that is worth your audience's time and is very valuable. 
• Just because posting times worked in the last month or the last week, this doesn't always mean that will continue. Keep experimenting if your feed isn't getting the response that you want, and find the times that work best for your posts!
• Get your audience involved! Create videos, and use polls and questions to get them talking back. Take advantage of contests to inspire followers to tag their loved ones and get them talking about you! 
• Can you donate time in your posting content to important things like your community and important things that your brand believes in? 
• Have you been creating content that captivates your audience? You need to do more than just sell a product! 

You can no longer sleep on the idea of social media, and you can't place all of your expectations on it without doing any legwork yourself. Social media and all the apps it is connected to are tools of any successful trade. Make sure you're using it correctly, growing with it, and know exactly what to expect out of it and the work you need to do! 

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