What are the top benefits of social media I need to know as a small business owner?

I think this question has been raised already but anyway, the benefits of social media rely in the fact that it is the cheapest, fastest and widest way to reach your potential customers and promote your business.

the benefits of social media can be summarized in:

1- awareness about your product or services . 

2- see what used your competitor and what the strong point and weakness point .

3- have more from potential  customer to save it in special list . 

4- follow this potential  customer and convert them to real customer . 

5- publish all your offers for huge number from people within short time and speed sharing . 

The benefits of social media are:

• Improves brand loyalty and awareness
• Gives you great audience insight
• Increases website traffic
• Increases sales
• Legitimises your brand
• Minimises costs if done right.

Well the benefits of social media really depend on two three things:

1. Which location are you based in?
2. Who is your desired target audience?
3. Which product are you providing?

In today's day and age different clusters reach differently to various modes of social media. The common factor though is presence on social media is mandatory. 

SINCE SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE WIDEST , CHEAPEST AND MOST POPULAR NOW ...SO YOU CAN HAVE AS MUCH BENEFITS AS YOU CAN FROM ITS SOCIAL MEDIA'S VARIOUS APPLICATIONS

Search results: In a previous article on building exposure through search results, I discussed how using social media can help you improve your ranking in search results. By extending your presence onto other sites, especially those of high “quality”, and building links from those sites back to your own, you can help elevate your ranking in search results and thus increase exposure for your business.  But you should be thoughtful in your approach, as how and where you build those links carries different value.  To be more efficient, focus on sites and engagement most relevant to your existing and potential customers.

Brand management:  As Yelp and other opinion sites gain momentum, you should consider your options for protecting your brand reputation, remembering that advocates as well detractors can comment on your business.  By using social media to proactively find and build relationships with customers; you may be able to turn them into fans to help deflect any negative opinions that may arise.  As the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense.  Also, by building more positive sentiment for your brand through social media, you can help ensure that when someone searches for your company, they’re less likely to find any negative comments or that any they find are far outweighed by positive sentiment.

Relationships:  More than a broadcast tool, social media offers a unique opportunity to network online and build your business.  Paul Rosenfeld, CEO of Fanminder, has found partners, customers, investors, and employees through social media, including on OPEN Forum’s Connectodex.  Donna Johnson, CEO of Indie Business Media, said recently about Twitter, specifically:  “I use it to have conversations and share information with my customers and business colleagues. I reach out to them, they reach back to me. We share, connect, learn and talk business.  How can that not be a benefit to my business, even if every Tweet does not result in a sale?”

Brand awareness:  Social media presents an incredible opportunity to generate brand awareness among a targeted audience.  Begin by researching what channels and tools your customers are using, and then start engaging and linking back to your own website.  While you may not see an enormous spike in traffic, you can be reasonably assured that those who do follow the link are more likely to be future customers.  “I’ve gotten quite a few leads from OPEN Forum,” Suzanne Vara, founder of Kherize5 Advertising & Marketing.  “It’s taken time to build a consistent presence, but eventually, people have noticed how involved I am in the community and have started reaching out.”

Innovation:  Social media can be a great learning tool, as well.  By knowing where your customers are talking about your products and services – or better yet – giving them a place to do so on your own site, you may find new areas for improvement or innovation.  Many of the improvements we made to OPEN Forum came after paying attention to feedback we’d received on the previous version of the site, as well as engaging our customers in conversations about how best we can meet their needs.

Competitive Research:  Besides the concern that your competitors may already be using social media, the upside is that by following what your competitors are doing and saying, or what customers are saying about them, you may find ways to differentiate your brand and get better results.  Rosalie Kramm, President of Kramm & Associates, says, “Keeping track of competitors and clients’ activities is very valuable. I can see what competitors are doing on social media and see how they’re marketing themselves.”

Given these benefits, it is worthwhile noting that not all social media tools are right for every small business.  While it may offer a less-expensive marketing option, social media marketing can sometimes cost more in time than in money.  That’s why it’s so important to start with a strategic vision for how social media can contribute to building your business.  As Anita Campbell says in this article on social media, “From a business perspective, if this is done aimlessly it can be more noise than signal... Often this disappointment results from approaching social media without a clear strategy and plan.

Source:https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/six-key-benefits-of-using-social-media-for-small-business-1/

Bette start2 to3 items and alone discover this

1. Social media is an easy way to learn about your audience

For businesses in any industry, the key to success is knowing your audience. Social media makes this possible, and easier to accomplish than ever. With tools like Facebook Insights in Hootsuite you can learn the dominant languages spoken among your social media audience, as well as their age and gender. This knowledge can help you cater campaigns and product offers to your target audience, which will provide you a better return on investment.

2. Social media helps target audiences more effectively

Geo-targeting is an effective way to send your message out to a specific audience or demographic based on their location. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have tools that allow you to communicate the right kind of content to your audience. For example, in Hootsuite you can target by ‘Location’, ‘Language’, ‘Age’, ‘Gender’, ‘Relationship status’, ‘Interested in’, and ‘Education’ on Facebook, and ‘Country(s)’ on Twitter. For example, if you want to send out a post to people who speak Spanish, geo-targeting is an easy and effective way to do it.

3. Social media helps find new customers and expand your audience

Social networks like Twitter allow small businesses to locate their current customers or seek out potential customers. For example, if you open a new coffee shop in the neighbourhood, you can create a geo search in Hootsuite to locate anyone tweeting about needing a morning cup of joe within your area. After locating those tweeting about coffee, you can start reaching out to them, and invite them to come try a hot bevvy at your new coffee shop.

4. Social media allows you to receive instant feedback from your customers’ perspective

Social media for business gives you instant access to positive or negative feedback, which provides you with valuable insights on the customer perspective. For example, if you launch a new product and share it on social media, you’ll instantly learn what your customers think of it. Another way to gain customer perspective with social media is by learning how they use your product; brands often base new products or services on their customers’ original ideas. Below is Contiki Holidays’ take on learning what people feel or think about their experience on a Contiki tour.

5. Improve market intelligence and get ahead of your competitors with social media

With social media monitoring you can gain key information on your competitors, therefore improving your market intelligence. This kind of intel will allow you to make strategic business decisions in order to stay ahead of your competition. For example, you can create search streams in Hootsuite to monitor mentions of your competitor’s name or product. Based on your search results, you can improve your business to offer something your competitors are missing.

6. Social media can help increase website traffic and search ranking

So you built a website for your company, now what? One of the best benefits of social media for business is using it to increase your website traffic. Not only does social media help you direct people to your website, but the more social media shares you receive, the higher your search ranking will be. For example, if every person who follows Hootsuite on Twitter retweets this post, it’s more likely to rank higher in Google’s search engine results page for variations of “social media for business.”

7. Share content easier and faster with social media

In the past, marketers faced the challenge of ensuring their content reaches their customers in the shortest possible time. With the help of social media, sharing content got easier and faster. When you use social media for business, specifically for sharing content about your business or for content curation, all you need to do is simply share it on your brand’s social network accounts. But keep in mind that getting your customers to share your content with their followers means you need to make sure your social media content aligns to your brand and interests your audience.

8. Social media helps generate leads for one third of the cost

Social media is an easy way to generate leads. For example, Hootsuite’s marketing department was built around content and social platforms, and Twitter ads has allowed us to scale, increase reach, and fuel demand generation. Hootsuite promotes two types of content via Twitter Ads: ungated content (free content requiring no email address for access) and gated content (free content requiring an email). Sharing gated content on social media is a great way for any company to generate leads.

Social customer service is the future of customer satisfaction: http://t.co/mvWuVdEKmf Download our free whitepaper to learn more — Hootsuite (@hootsuite) May,

9. Create meaningful relationships with customers through social media

Social media is great for creating meaningful relationships with your customers. For example, social media allows tourism brands to create dialogue with travellers, therefore creating relationships with customers before, during, and after they have booked a trip with the company. This kind of social media dialogue between brands and customers is something traditional advertising will never achieve.

. Social media lets you increase brand awareness and reach with little to no budget

Social media for business has allowed companies to increase brand awareness and reach of their brand at little to no cost. The costs associated with these strategies are a lot higher with traditional advertising methods. Recently, marketing departments across companies started hiring community managers to increase brand awareness and reach through social media. Community managers foster relationships with online audiences in different regions. At Hootsuite, we have community managers for each of our three regions: APAC, EMEA, and The Americas. This helps us make sure we keep expanding the reach of our brand to those regions and maintain relationships with key stakeholders.

The benefits of social media summarize in the fact that it's a marketing tool u can reach to many customers without even getting out from the door it's a big advantage  

the benefits of social media are:

adv. with law cost

reference for consumer

easy to check

 

Apart from large and small business trying to justify the cost and time, the following factors in my opinion are the benefits of social media marketing.1. Product/Service Recognition : One of the most powerful ways to use social media is as a brand-building tool. With social media, you get to decide how you want to position your company and what you want people to know about what you do. With consistent effort and great content, you can build a reputation for your brand around your company’s values, benefits, and advantages.2. Community Reach : There is nothing like social media when it comes to cultivating a community. When your followers become part of your community, you gain instant access to them. That means you can find out what challenges they are facing and what they like and don’t like about your offerings. You can engage in ongoing dialog that can be more valuable than any kind of paid market research.3. Repeated Exposure : There is an old marketing adage that says it takes six to eight exposures to a product or service before a customer decides to buy. A clear benefit of social media is repeat exposure with your network. You have the opportunity to remind them over and over again about what you have to offer, which can shorten your sales cycles dramatically.