It’s no longer optional for businesses to have social media. It’s an essential tool to grow your brand and collect valuable insights.

Here are 10 benefits of social media for brand building:

1. Increases your brand awareness

A logical place to reach new customers would be on social media given that almost half the world’s population uses social. The idea that people only follow brands that they already know is a myth. 60% of Instagram users have said that they’ve found new products using Instagram.

2. Humanises your brand

You have to be able to show the human side of your brand to potential customers. One of the key benefits of social media for business is the ability to create real human connection. create these relationships are to show your followers how existing customers benefit from your product. It also helps showing the faces behind your business.

3. Your brand must become a thought leader

Social media is able to give your business the chance to become a thought leader, regardless of what industry your business is in. Just like humanising your brand, becoming a thought leader is a very good way to build consumer trust.

4. Reputation management

Whether you’re online to respond to your customers or not, they’ll be talking about you on social. But if you’re online, you and your team can highlight the positive posts and address the negative ones. Now is your chance to be able to tell your side of the story about your business in a nice and professional way if someone speaks falsely online about it.

5. Increase website traffic

Some of the best ways to create traffic on your website is through the use of social media posts and ads. Share the content from your website on the social channels that you post on. You should always offer value instead of being too promotional online. Also always make sure that your website address is on your social media profile so that people can find your website.

6. Generate leads

Social media offers an exceptionally easy way for customers to show their interest in your products. Lead generation is a very important benefit of social media for business that social networks offer formats specifically designed to collect leads for advertising.

7. Boost sales

It doesn’t matter what you’re selling, social media can help you. A sales funnel is the process through which a new contact becomes a customer. This is important because your social media account is actually a very critical part of this sales funnel. Now is the time to align your sales goals and social marketing.

8. Partner with influencers

The best way to drive social word of mouth is to partner with influencers. Influencers are people who generally have a large following on social media and are able to draw the attention of those who follow them to your brand.

9. Customer service and customer support

Research shows that many customers expect the brands they follow to be responsive on social media. If you aren’t responsive then you immediately damage your brand’s reputation. HBR research, show that response on a tweet for example, will make a customer willing to spend money with the brand on another purchase, especially if they get a timeous response.

10. Learn more about your customers

Social media is able to collect a whole bunch of information about your customers. Your business can use this information to make better and more strategic decisions. All social networks give analytics which provide information about the potential customers who interact with your account. This can also help with your business’s strategic decisions.