Article Contributed by Kurt Smith
For a long time, articles in the news made fun of the way Facebook at work was a time sink. When companies blocked Facebook and Twitter on their computers, the general reaction in the media showed understanding. Reactions of this kind demonstrate how businesses and the media used to be out of touch with how central to modern marketing the social media are.
According to a report published in the MIT Sloan Management Review, 74% of businesses still fail to understand that a social media presence is important to their success. As large as this number is, though, it’s smaller than what it used to be in 2011. Businesses are only beginning to understand why the social media and followers on them matter. For those who find it difficult to take them seriously, here are the reasons why social media fans count.
To Google, social media fans are the new SEO
Google has tried many methods to judge websites for authority by in the past. While looking at a website’s backlinks is an important way for search engines to evaluate its stature, it is a method that can be abused. Perhaps this is the reason why Google has increasingly turned to the social media as a way to judge how useful websites are. The more social mentions a website gets, the more relevant it is seen to be.
Since Google doesn’t have access to the content that is present on Facebook, Facebook mentions can only indirectly help websites improve their search ranking. According to reports on Searchmetrics and Moz, though, Google sees Google+ differently.
It’s important for businesses to put content on Google+ because posts on this social network get crawled by Google very quickly. Frequent posts can help a business get followers and mentions on this social network and also a search ranking boost.
The more you are present on the social networks, the more easily you are found on the search engines
When people need to search for a restaurant to eat out at or a store to buy contact lenses from, often, they search directly on social media sites like Facebook or Yelp for ideas. If they see good user reviews for a retailer like NextDayLenses.com, they are likely to head there. A sizable fan following on multiple social media sites is likely to help you gather reviews to help these searchers see you by. When a potential customer searches directly on Google, frequent mentions on some of these sites are likely to show up in Google’s search results, too.
You get brand recognition
One of the first lessons you learn in marketing is that brand recognition gets you better sales. According to a survey released by the marketing firm Chadwick Martin Bailey, one out of two people on Facebook and Twitter say that they feel more inclined to buy from a company that they follow on these social networks than they do from someone they don’t. They also believe that they are likely to buy from brands that their fellow Facebook friends believe in. A large Facebook following is the only way to get such action.
Customers like to express their complaints on the social media
In the past, when consumers had a complaint, they took it up over the phone or over email. These days, they often take their problems up on the social media. Each time a business finds a complaint turning up on Facebook, it is an opportunity in public relations. Quickly attending to a complaint on Facebook or Twitter and having other people see how efficiently the complaint is handled can be a powerful exercise in reputation building. A business can only get great mileage handling complaints on Facebook when it has a large following.
Finally…
Working towards a large fan following on the social media can important simply because it can generate better awareness of your brand. When a person likes your company enough to follow it on a social network, he is likely to mention it on his own social group.
About the Author
Kurt Smith is a marketing analyst and consultant. He enjoys using existing customer data to improve campaigns and his articles mainly appear on marketing blogs. Check NextDayLenses.com to see how a trusted retailer uses their site to get the best results.