People tend to be shortsighted when it comes to discuss the benefits of social media. The fact remains that 59% of marketers actively use this channel to support their lead generation and meeting business goals. You cannot imagine a brand that isn’t active on social media in one ways or other.

If you are expecting a quick result, you may not achieve that, but it can make a huge difference to your brand both short and long-term.

1. Finding trends in social media in real-time

Social media is usually very transparent in nature. Therefore, you can easily see unfiltered, real-time conversations between customers and brands alike.  And if you want to find out why a particular brand is doing well or what customers usually complain about, you can find all that and more.

As a matter of fact, the social media activity and shared content of your audience can give ideas about industry trends. Hashtags like #festivalfashion on Instagram can tell everything from relevant influencers to fashion trends that are currently popular. We can say that social media is an excellent source of business intelligence.

2. Better analysis of Competition

The most important benefit of social media marketing is its ability to analyze in detail about your competitor’s activity. Things such as-What are they currently focusing on? What type of ad-campaigns are they running? What different strategies they are adopting?

These are very important questions that need to be answered. Social competitive analysis can help plan your own strategies for content or advertising.

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It may happen that your competitors are doing a great job with Facebook ads but have negligible presence on Instagram. So, you may think of exploring influencer marketing or content campaigns for the sake of a unique positioning in the market.

3. High quality customer service

Customer service through social media is prompt and well directed unlike the traditional methods of telephone calls or emails. Social media has the capability to make your customer service very meaningful. The way you handle your customers’ complaint can have a positive impact on your prospects, customers, and competitors alike as they can see how you interact with your buyers.

In fact, users were not very happy with the quality of customer service experience they received from popular social channels such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And of late, there are a lot of users who shifted their allegiance to new channels such as Vero, and Connectd India because of better customer service.

You may have been listening to feedback or addressing specific complaints on social media, because you know it’s the ideal platform to provide quick service and let customers know that your objective is to help them out.

5. Insurance against competition

If you are very active on the social media, it adds a lot of power to your business. How do you react when you learn that your closest competitor who has an Instagram account is packed with customers’ pictures, Stories, comments, and snapshots showing off their product, while you have an Instagram profile but only for the namesake? It’s not the most ideal situation for your business. But if you are regularly posting on the relevant channels, it means that you’re active and ready to embrace new customers.

Besides, the power of social media has an important role to play in the search engines when someone looks up your brand. Your Instagram, Facebook, and Connectd account could act like the first point of engagement for your customers on your website. This establishes beyond doubt the importance of maintaining an active social media presence for your business.

6. Creates a better search engine presence

The impact of SEO on the social media has been a topic of debate for many years, and the concept of backlinks proves there is a strong connection between social media and search performance. It’s also true that shares, and click-throughs by social media represent positive search score to Google. Therefore, social media may bring a sizable traffic source especially if you are looking for your social traffic through Google Analytics.

7. Appealing to young customers

There is no doubt that social media has transformed the traditional advertising space. It’s not only appealing to young customers but is quite capable of reaching customers of all ages. However, Gen Z has indeed revolutionized marketing by responding less and less to traditional modes of advertising. The younger consumers are now more used to social media, and brands now need to go beyond in-your-face commercials and advertisements. If we look at the social media demographics trend, we find that those who are most active on Instagram are less than 30. So, if you thinking to target those younger customers, Instagram is the place to watch out.

Now, brands cannot do without active social media presence, and businesses should seriously think about the potential benefits of social media, based on specific and actionable goals. The benefits may not be the same for every brand, still there’s no denying the importance of having a social media presence.