As technology evolves over the years so does the reach of digital media. According to recent statistics, the average adult in the United States of America now spends an average of 11 hours and 27 minutes each day consuming digital media. While historically most of that time has been spent watching TV. Now, with changing technology, brand-to-customer interactions have also changed and people are increasing switching from TV to smartphone usage. In fact, US adults now spend an average of 2 hours and 23 minutes on social media per day.
Why is social media important for business?
Social media has drastically changed the way businesses operate when it comes to interacting with previous and new audiences – especially when it comes to digital marketing. In this day and age, for every business to grow and be successful it needs to able to successful reach its consumer’s.
A main part of this strategy now involves a strong social media presence. It helps in numerous ways such as representing the brand, efficient communication with customers, boosting sales, etc. However, everything has pros as well as cons.
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Advantages of Social Media
- Reaching a larger target audience – 80% of the world’s population has access to the internet and smartphones. This means that millions of individuals use at least one type of social media platform. This is a huge advantage to businesses that have adopted social media for marketing purposes.
- Better connection with customers – You may have noticed that profiles of most businesses on social media have an option of directly messaging them. This creates a direct passage of communication between customers and the company staff. This opens a lot of doors in terms of providing better services and making your business more efficient.
- Creating meaningful and unique content – Social media gives businesses to produce unlimited content that engages their audience. The best part of this is that it comes at absolutely no cost to the company.
Disadvantages of Social Media
- Managing social media accounts is a certainly a full-time job – A business needs to invest resources into managing its profile i.e. content, traffic, etc. Meaning that you may have to hire staff or invest money into paid advertisements.
- The risk of negative feedback – Social media is where people share their experiences – good and bad. If somebody shares a poor experience it leaves a bad impression on your business. A common mistake made by companies is not responding to these posts or reviews. If people see that a business is unconcerned with complaints, chances are they would not use/buy its services in the future.
- Results are not immediate – Probably the biggest downfall to using social media for your business is that you do not get fast results. A business needs to post a good amount of content to measure the success of their campaigns.
Take a look at this infographic from FameMass to see how your target market is spending most of their connected to digital and social media in 2019.
Maybe it’s time to reconsider your businesses approach to digital marketing?
