Name: NI Parcels - Courier Services
Brand: NI Parcels
Rating: 4.9 (3298 reviews)

These days it’s very hard to find a holistic marketing strategy that doesn’t involve social media.

However that being said, what actually are the benefits of having social media channels for your small business? Building a social media presence for a brand certainly isn’t a quick and easy job – in fact it demands a lot of time and a whole lot of effort. So in the end, is it really worth it?

The short answer: yes. There are one hundred and one benefits of social media marketing for small businesses. To sum it up, here are 4 main benefits of social media marketing for a small business that are sure to get you thinking.

1. Social media increases brand awareness and customer loyalty.

Having social media channels for your brand gives you more opportunity to give your brand a voice and personality. When you develop and humanize your brand in this way, it makes you much more accessible to customers and unveils the opportunity for connections and customer loyalty. After all, people like doing business with other people, not necessarily companies. Additionally, having your brand’s presence across multiple social media channels makes you more familiar and recognizable. A customer may be better acquainted with your brand after seeing your social media presence. For example, you might create a high-quality piece of content that will be shared by your followers for others to see, who may not have otherwise known about your brand.

2. Social media can help increase website traffic and enhance SEO rankings.

This point really speaks for itself – without social media, traffic to your site is limited to those already familiar with your brand and individuals searching for the keywords you currently rank for. So without it, it can be difficult for potential customers to find you and become familiar with your brand. Each of your social media channels are a new path leading back to your website – and that is why it is so important to produce quality content on your channels as opposed to just having it for the sake of it. The more social media shares you receive as a result of producing quality content, the higher your search ranking will be.

Social signals now factor as an indicator in search rankings, and so being active on social media, engaging and producing quality content indicates to search engines that your brand is credible.

3. Social media allows you to get to know your customers.

Using social media gives you the opportunity to gain valuable insights about your audience and potential customers. Being able to see this behaviour is extremely valuable information to have as a brand. You will be able to monitor things such as comments to see what people think directly. Also, using tools such as Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics (see here for a few more) for example, gives you the opportunity to see what type of content you are producing generates the most interest. In turn, this gives you the chance to strategically plan your content as per this behaviour.

4. Social media allows you to do all of the above with little to no budget.

Building brand awareness and increasing traffic to your website while producing quality content and engaging with your customers can be achieved at very little to no cost with the help of social media marketing. The key is to start small and not feel overwhelmed with the likes of advertising through Facebook and Twitter (which is relatively cheap). Once you get the hang of it, you can increase your budget how and when you like – so you’ll never have to worry about overspending. And in correspondence, you’ll see an increase on your conversion rates.