This might come as a surprise. It goes against conventional wisdom. But it is entirely true and it will help you get ahead much quicker. Are there other ways you can build a massive audience on Twitter and Facebook? Sure, but they all take much longer and are far less guaranteed.

Think about the people who are most successful on social media already. Who are they? Most of them are celebrities. This is obviously because they are in the spotlight already. But is it? Because if you look a little further, you’ll find that producers, executives and others in that world are also big on social media.

So why is that? Simple: it’s because they’re rubbing shoulders with the massive influencers. They’re in that world. And if you’re in the in crowd, it is very easy to see your content explode as it gets shared and liked by all the right people, or as your channel gets recommended by other top producers.

That might sound cynical. It might sound like it echoes the somewhat cynical notion that the easiest way to get ahead in life is to go to a university like Harvard where you make the right contacts and the opportunities just throw themselves at you.

Maybe, but it’s also true.

But here’s the good news: if you’re not already ‘in’ that crowd, there are still ways you can get around it.

Right now, if you message Richard Branson and asked for him to promote your latest product he would not answer you. He might if you were friends with Bill Gates, but you’re not, so that’s a different story.

But if you knew Richard Branson, then he would almost feel obligated to at least respond to your Tweet. If he had met you in person, it would be different.

Now, you’re not going to find it all that easy to meet Richard Branson in person or to begin moving in those circles. But what you can do, is to start moving in the outer circles. You can rub shoulders with people who are little bigger than you.

How? You do this by going to social events. You do it by going to networking events and events thrown by Facebook for its smaller influencers.

Socializing in real life builds real connections. And real connections are worth much more – even on social media!

Social media marketing strategies are quickly becoming the go-to strategy for businesses that are looking to increase their web presence.
This is because this particular form of marketing can have a large number of benefits for any business who uses it.
Here are some of the ways that your small business will benefit from marketing through social media:

1. Social media marketing can help potential customers ‘discover’ your business.

While most of your marketing strategies will be based on the concept of directly talking to your customers, social media marketing goes a long way towards the customer ‘discovering’ your company on their own.

Because social media sites promote communication and sharing between the people who use it, it allows a user to share information about a product or service they like with their friends.

It also allows a single user to locate or discover new things on their own, based on how they navigate the various social media sites. This means a regular social media website user could accidentally find your business while they are performing their everyday online tasks. This can certainly add to your efforts to locate new customers.
Social Media Marketing for Your Small Business

2. Social media is wildly popular with online users.

One of the purposes of any business marketing campaign is to reach out to as many potential customers as is possible. Social media websites are extremely popular with online users, meaning your business will have access to a very large number of people to advertise to.

Recent studies have indicated that Facebook has more than 1.06 billion users and that more than 2.5 million websites have directly integrated themselves with it. YouTube sees more than 1 billion unique users each and every month, and Twitter has more than 1 billion users itself! More than 525 million people are currently using Google Plus and that number grows everyday as well.

This means that social media marketing offers your business the chance to reach out to an awesome amount of people each and every day!

3. Social media marketing allows your business to raise its brand awareness.

Social media platforms allow a company to spread its brand’s information all over the web. Potential viewers could end up seeing your brand in image form, in online videos, in discussions between users and via your company’s website.

They will also be able to hear about your brand when they perform an online search. The more that people hear, read or see your brand, the better the chance that it will stick in their minds.

This is how you can vastly increase your brand’s recognition factor. Social media also allows your business to directly control its brand’s reputation and repair any damage to it very quickly.

4. Social media marketing increases customer trust and loyalty.

One of the best ways to increase your customer’s trust in your company is to speak to them directly, as though you were a friend rather than a business. Social media allows your company to do exactly that. Direct interactions and contact with customers that is engaging, interesting and cooperative both help to build up customer trust and create customer loyalty.
Make your customers feel appreciated on a social media platform that they use every day, and you will see an increase in repeat customer transactions!

5. Social media allows you to create attention for your services and products.

Anytime your business offers a new product or service you will want to bring as much attention as possible to it. Social media marketing allows your company to showcase your newest products or services all over the web. It also lets you create a vast network of interested parties, through which you can create this attention.

6. Social media allows you to check out what the competition is up to.

Anyone can check out any company or business that advertises via social media. This means that you can easily check out the competition and find out what they are up to.

Just make sure that your products, services, deals and promotions are better than your competitors!

7. Social media allows you to interact with your customers.

With social media you can do more than just showcase your latest advertisements to your customers. It lets you interact with them. Online users are always bombarded by banners and advertisements, so they want to see something different. Rather than just shoving an advertisement into their faces, you can use social media to deliver your message in an engaging, interactive and far less aggressive manner.
You can have a talk with your customers and they can talk back. You can use social media to find out your customer’s opinions, ideas and desires, and then you can use the information to deliver it to them.
Direct interaction with your customer base can help your company in several ways.
It can help you determine the effectiveness of your current products and services, what types of changes your customers would like to see, any current problems or concerns your customers may have and what recommendations and suggestions

your customers are offering to you. You can also use it to improve your customer relations, build customer trust and develop loyalty.

All of this will end up helping your bottom line.

8. Social media is a great way to perform market research.

Speaking of interacting with your customers, social media marketing is a great way to get a little market research done. Interactive online media platforms allow you to listen to what your customers have to say when it comes to products and services.
You will be able to hear what your customers say, read what they write and track the specific web links they click on. You can then use this information to improve your product or service- then you can use it to tell your customers all about your improvements. Few things offer your business a chance for such easy insight into your specific market.

9. Social media can help you improve your customer service department.

You already know how important quality customer service is to retaining customer loyalty, so you are probably always looking for ways you can improve it. The direct customer interactions offered through social media sites are a great way to track and improve your customer services.

You can directly ask for and receive questions and comments from your customers, then you can directly respond to them. This kind of social media

customer service is less expensive than over-the-phone service, and customers will appreciate the ability to connect with you via their favorite form of interaction.

You can also respond to customer problems in real time, offering answers and corrections almost immediately.

This means that you could turn a disgruntled customer back into a loyal customer in a matter of seconds, in plain view of your other customers too!

10. Social media allows your business to establish itself as an expert in its niche.

It is very possible to establish your company as an expert in your specific niche using the various tools created by social media websites. All you have to do is contribute to some blogs, social media posts or online videos and provide the viewer with some helpful information.

Not only will the viewer be learning something new about your business’s niche, but they will also be associating your company and your brand as a source of knowledge. People like to use businesses that they can trust.

11. Social media marketing allows you to build a network of loyal followers.

Through the process of networking, you can develop a large following of loyal customers. These loyal customers can then use the very same social media processes to share their affection and loyalty for your company, adding
to your network. This means that your company could be networking to thousands of people every minute of the day.

12. Social media is a very inexpensive form of business marketing.

Unlike other forms of traditional marketing, advertising along a number of social media platforms is inexpensive. You do not have to cover the costs associated with creating and distributing promotional advertisements, nor do you have to pay for paper, ink and shipping costs.
Almost all of the social media sites are free to join and maintain as well, so you will only have to spend time and effort on your social media campaigns. This form of online marketing is also very eco-friendly, because it does not use physical paper advertisements.

13. Social media marketing can help with your SEO campaigns.

Your business should have a search engine optimization or SEO campaign in effect, to make sure that your company’s website shows up at the very top of the results of major search engines like Google and Bing.

Marketing through social media sites can increase your company’s web visibility in the eyes of search engines, which will increase your relevancy rankings.

You can also increase the amount of links connected to your website through social media connections, YouTube videos, blog comments and more. The more links the higher the relevancy rankings.

14. Social media marketing will drive traffic to your website.

The more you are able to interact with your customers via social media sites, the more likely it is they will visit your company’s website. In-bound links and suggestions are great ways to help online viewers locate your site.

15. Social media marketing is great for niche marketing.

If your company’s services and products are very niche specific, social media marketing will allow you to market directly within your niche. This can help you to reach that very specific field of customers who will appreciate your individual product.

You can also help generate interest for your specific niche, which can help you gain new customers and new followers. Social media marketing can be both broad-based and specific niche-based at the same time, which gives your business the best possible chance of reaching the most amounts of customers.

16. Social marketing is already popular.

You won’t have to wait to begin drumming up interest in your social media marketing campaign because social media is already outrageously popular. Online viewers already know how to use these social sites and already expect to interact with businesses on them.

This means that your newly implemented social media marketing campaign could begin producing results right off the bat!

As you can see, there are a large number of benefits associated with social media marketing techniques.
These tactics already use a popular customer medium, and they increase your business’s visibility, its reputation, its search engine ranking relevancy and its ability to reach a large audience.
It is also very cheap, but extremely effective.

Lear More: The Secret To Social Media Success is…….