If you’ve been reading along here for a while you will know that social media offers great marketing opportunities for businesses of all shapes and sizes. In Australia alone more than 13 million people use social media, with 45% saying they use it once a day and 17% saying they use it up to 5 times a day! That should be plenty of reasons to jump onto the social media band-wagon if you haven’t already.

Businesses mostly use social media to:

• promote brand and business name
• tell customers about their products and services
• find out what customers think of their business and products
• attract new customers
• build stronger relationships with existing customers

Advantages of using social media

Social media marketing has many advantages:

• broad reach – social media can reach billions of people all around the world
• ability to target – social media (e.g. Facebook) allows businesses to target specific groups, often in particular locations or with particular interests
• free or low-cost – most types of social media are free for business with paid options that are usually low-cost
• personal – social media allows you to communicate on a personal basis with individual customers and groups and build a stronger relationship and community
• fast – you can quickly send updates and information to many people at once
• easy – you don’t need to be very tech savvy or have elaborate computer equipment to be active on social media. Everyone can do it or learn it.

Risks of using social media

Of course, marketing through social media also has its risks just like every other marketing strategy in business. These potential risks include:

• wasted time and money – if you don’t know what you’re doing
• the spread of the wrong kind of information – word of mouth online is very powerful so you need to be careful with what you post
• legal risks – there are rules to follow such as privacy legislation and the laws regarding spam, copyright and other online issues.

It’s important to be aware of these risks and to have strategies in place to avoid them if you decide to get involved in social media marketing.

Social media is no longer a fad but an important and effective online marketing strategy that has very high adoption and very high returns. Many businesses are using free social media platforms to grow their businesses, are you missing out? If you choose to be the one to swim against the tide, you will end up drowning. Unless you have some extremely powerful and proven methods that will keep bringing you customers… I mean sustainable methods… I highly recommend that you look at taking your business online and start taking advantage of the many free tools that are out there. It’s a fun place to be and you’ll get to know your customers really well.