The Growing Importance Of Social Media Among Small And Medium Businesses

By Author: Anita Ray
Total Articles: 29
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Social media is helping businesses to build a strategic customer centric approach and implement flexible business models by successfully establishing a connection with the customers. The main intention behind this approach is to gain attention or traffic through social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+ etc. Today majority of the small and medium firms have realized the importance of social media in growing their businesses and made efforts to integrate the strategies in their marketing approach. Event though SMBs have limited finances, these companies are investing more on social media campaigns anticipating effective and efficient growth in their business.

Integrating social media into the business:
Most of the social media platforms works on a targeted approach and hence it is very important to analyze and be specific to direct your products and services to the right audience. With increasing number of platforms and features constantly evolving, small and medium firms are finding it difficult to decide which one is right for their business. The strategies of social media, work differently ...
... for B2B and B2C – while some cater to the niche group others target wider number of audience without any constraints. As a small and medium business firm, you cannot really afford wasting funds investing on one social network while your primary target audience are more active on the other online platform. So, based on the business and product you are dealing with, identify the target audience and be specific to engage with right social media platform.

Benefits of social media on Small and Medium Businesses:
Today, many of the entrepreneurs have accepted the importance of social media for their business, be it a small company doing local based business or a large organization interacting with global markets. Social media is not just about gaining the likes, re-tweets and fans, but rather it is establishing the market presence with great positive impact. Some of the benefits of implementing the social media strategies on small and medium businesses are:
• Cost-effective marketing tool:
Majority of the small and medium businesses are treating social media as an important marketing tool and relying on it to generate website traffic, get potential leads and collaborate with the customers about existing and future products and services. Generally, social media platforms connect millions of people free online where they like and share the content which is generally related to particular product or service. These networks also offer cost-effective paid services, which is comparatively much lesser than the traditional way of advertising. With social media, small businesses are able to tailor their services better than before, by actively interacting with the customers, getting their feedbacks, answering their queries and customizing their services to the individual needs.
• Boosts content marketing:
Content has greater important in search engine algorithms and is one the commercially important digital marketing tool that adds credibility for the website. Small and medium firms are using social media to distribute and promote their content so that they can get huge portion of referral traffic on the web through sharing content. It is the most effective and valuable tool to establish the legitimacy of the brand and build a trust among customers about the product.
• Helps in branding:
If your business is new to market or if you are introducing a new product from your brand, then social media is one of the excellent ways to reach out the targeted audience. It is hard to establish their names, gain popularity and create brand awareness for small and medium businesses, as most of them have limited marketing resources. Hence for small and medium business engaging in social media is as much important as having a website; a website helps in establishing the brand whereas a social media network tells the buyers that the brand is active. Social media is more effective than other types of advertising, because within a fraction of second, the content goes viral online, thus promoting the brand to the large number of potential customers. It has great influence on customer acquisition as most of the consumers check their social media pages for product information before making the decision on buying.

Marvist Digital Marketing, a 10 year old premium company, has established a special niche for their high-end professional service to the small and medium enterprise market segments in US & UK. Over the years, Marvist served nearly 1000+ medium firms with its expertise and innovative approach that offered true economic value to the customers.