Love pays: Social media marketing benefits

What are the benefits of engaging content social marketing?

A little love can go a long way. Social media content that engages fans brings your community to life and helps you reach many different objectives:

• Build a receptive audience. Traditional push marketing has limited impact since only a small proportion of subscribers open newsletter emails. Social marketing takes a different approach.  Fans who have signed up to your page may be more receptive to your content since they actively log on to Facebook to seek out news, information and entertainment. You can also reach more people when fans’ interact with your content and their wider community notices.
• Communicate effectively with your audience. Engaged fans are more likely to pay attention to your communications, whether you are aiming to raise awareness of your brand, generate interest around a new product launch, educate consumers on an issue or reinforce your image. In a world where an increasing number of brands are competing for your customers’ attention, this ability to cut through the noise is a great benefit of social marketing.
• Get feedback quickly and directly. Engaged customers care about their favorite brands. They want your products to be as good as they can be, so they are forthcoming with comments and feedback. Social media is the perfect place to test an idea, find out what features you could improve and hear stories about how delighted your customers are.
• Generate word of mouth through a community of brand ambassadors. Engaged fans want to share their enthusiasm with their friends, creating a vast community of ambassadors for your brand. Even negative word of mouth can be an opportunity when your brand responds openly and constructively to comments.
• Conduct effective viral marketing campaigns. When a campaign ‘goes viral’ you can quickly reach millions of people. One of the hardest parts of making a viral campaign work is catching the attention of the first few fans who will start spreading the word, so having an engaged core community is a great start.
• Reward loyal customers. When your fans are following you, it’s easy to give back by providing exclusive offers, prize giveaways, relevant information or special online experiences they’ll enjoy. Rewards such as online coupons and special deals are also a good way to drive customers to store.