This President’s Day, we give a nod of recognition to our current president, Barack Obama. Obama has made his mark on history as America’s first African American president as well as the first president to effectively take full advantage of social media, starting even before his presidential election campaign in 2008. As Americans have started moving away from traditional platforms like television and newspapers in favor of digital communications, public figures and businesses alike have begun to take advantage of social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter in order to connect with supporters and customers.
President Obama has created an all-encompassing social media strategy that any business should envy by taking advantage of all that digital communications have to offer. With profiles on everything from Facebook to LinkedIn, Reddit to YouTube, Obama has utilized hashtags, videos and memes to promote his policies and gain supporters.
With 52% of online adults using multiple social media sites at a time, there is an increasing number of ways in which businesses can grow their brand and customer base. It is important to recognize that each social media platform has its own separate audience profile and features, but these underlying benefits encompass all forms:
Reach New Customers
Taking advantage of multiple social media platforms can help your business to reach diverse customer demographics. For example, Pinterest is dominated almost exclusively by women, while LinkedIn is more popular among college graduates, executives, and members of higher-income households. With a little research on websites like pewinternet.org, your business can target the platforms that are most effective for reaching the types of customers you want.
React Quickly
Social media allows a business to respond quickly in times of need. Whether it’s a customer writing a bad review or if your business is on the wrong side of a smear campaign, social media allows your business toaddress and remedy these claims as quickly as possible. The reputation of your business is nurtured over a long period of time and speed is the key to keeping reckless claims from damaging what has taken years to build. Social media gives you the opportunity to react before it’s too late.
Don’t Need To Break The Bank
Large corporations can afford the monumental bill that comes along with having an in-house marketing department, small and medium businesses not so much. The use of social media platforms like Vine and Instagram, on the other hand, are FREE. Platforms like Facebook have even added new business features that allow you to “boost” your posts’ visibility for a nominal fee. With the use of social media, your business can create marketing campaigns and reach targeted customers for virtually nothing but the cost of your own creativity.
Customize Your Message to Different Audiences
As previously mentioned, different consumer groups frequent different platforms. This allows your business tocustomize its message to the different markets segments you’re targeting. So rather than creating one universal message, your business can touch on points that are important to specific demographics and use it to advertise to them directly.
“Spreadability”
Your company can have a million followers or friends, and you can post every single day, but the real benefit of social media is its ability to generate word of mouth with only the click of a button. Platforms like Facebook have “shares” while Twitter has “retweets,” it’s this ability to instantaneously spread information to others that is the real power of social media. Users can pass along what interests them to others, who can then repeat the process and so on. This allows your company to reach far beyond those consumers who already know about your service or product, to those individuals who are more likely to reflect on information when it’s coming from a trusted source.
Increase Trust and Brand Image
Probably the most beneficial aspect of companies using social media, other than to promote their products and services, is their ability to increase consumer trust and build a stronger brand image. When customers are able to contact you and find out information about you over a variety of different sources, they’re more likely to trust your company as a whole. Maintaining your brand image across multiple platforms also increases yourrelatability to customers and increases the likelihood that they will develop brand loyalty.
Social media platforms are becoming more and more popular as customers start to obtain their information online rather than through traditional media outlets. This gives companies a major advantage by being able to tap into multiple demographics and connect with them over a common ground. Customers are obsessed withdigital content consumption, and that includes information that pertains to your company as a whole, as well as your offerings. Take a pointer from President Obama and take advantage of all of the benefits these platforms have to offer. You may not win a presidential election, but you CAN win more customers. Check out ofa.bo/t2pc to read about Obama’s latest campaign, and call Green Group Studio at (561)594-7336 TODAY to find out how we can take your company to the next level with our social media services!
