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All this week, we have been posting about Social Media and how it can help your business. During discussions with our clients, it was clear that there were different views about what Social Media actually was. One of the more common views we hear from our customers is that they see Social Media as a tool for young people to share photos of themselves falling out of nightclubs.

Faced with this feedback and the general media coverage, it is not difficult to see why many businesses are struggling with how Social Media might help them. Hopefully, over the course of this week we have planted one or two seeds of opportunity. If you still need convincing, we’ve added some more business benefits below:

1. More conversations about your brand. Our Social Media Strategies are about increasing the number of online conversations there are about your products and services. The trick to this is to make sure these conversations are happening where your customers are most likely to be. We use a phrase called Internet Footprint, the larger your footprint the better and the different facets of Social Media help with this.

2. Traffic booster. Using video sharing techniques or social news sites, there is always the potential for you to go viral. If this happens, it is time to hang onto your hat because you are likely to experience the type of traffic that you have never had in the past. Just make sure your bandwidth is ready and your landing pages are converting.

3. It’s new and a bit different. This benefit is not always going to be true, however for the time being it is a little bit different. There’s growing concern about our so called “ad blindness”, where we are beginning to sub-consciously block out on page advertisements. Social Media Networking is a way around this.

4. Comparably low costs. A Social Media Marketing Plan, can be a very cost affective way to build your brand and company awareness. Using this form of marketing is also more measurable, so you will be able to see whether you are taking the right message to market very quickly.

5. Great tool for search engine optimisation. Whilst you should never take part in Social Media Networking just for SEO purposes, it is a very agreeable additional benefit. Social Media increases your Internet Footprint, which in turn means that you have the potential to be found in more places.

6. Instant customer feedback. A number of companies use Social Media as a way to encourage their customers to provide feedback about their service. If you’re offering great service and have lots of happy customers, then this is a great marketing opportunity for you.

7. Support you existing marketing activities. The very nature of Social Media Networking is that it is a dialogue that is happening online. Many successful above the line marketing campaigns have taken full advantage of this by encouraging people to use their Social Media platforms, giving them instant access to their customer base.

8. Become a leader. We’ve covered blogs in detail before, however it is worth reiterating. Using blogs to support your business is a great way to demonstrate your leadership and expertise within your market.

What to do now? You are more than welcome to post your comments regarding this post, perhaps you can help us add to the list? Alternatively, if you would like to speak to Generate UK, please do not hesitate to call us on 0845 388 9185 or via our contact us page.