Why bother using social media for your business?

If you are toying with the idea of starting to use social media on this wet and windy summer's day (!), here's a few compelling reason's why your company should join the conversation...

1. Set up is quick.  Your new Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ (etc) or even blog could be set up and running in a few hours (quicker if you get the helpful bods at Cariad to help)

2. Low budget.  If you are setting up your own Facebook fan page, company and personal LinkedIn page, or perhaps Twitter handle, you can get going on next to no budget at all. If you want to get a head start and find out how to reach your target market for your specific industry - why not consider getting trained by Marketing professionals (like us!) who study social media all the time (we live and breathe it). If you're trained by marketing professionals, you can rest assured that you don't have to read all of the user manuals and instructions and decide what will work for you - we've done that already - and will share all of the best practice with you. If you're interested have a look at our social media workshops.

3. Customer engagement. Yep, I know it's a marketing term but it is true. When you communicate with customers and potential customers via social media in the right way - they engage with your brand (business) and start a two way dialogue, always worth having!

4. Warm leads. There are literally 1,000s of businesses posting every day looking for suppliers in all industries - consumers too. Do you know a great web design company in Hertfordshire? Where can I get my hair cut in St Albans? Where is my nearest accountant? People post all the time - you can easily get in touch and put YOUR business in the frame.

5. Referrals. Use social media to refer business and to be referred. Word of mouth advertising - online style. It's really effective!

6. SEO. Search engine optimisation for those of you not familiar with the term - takes place in two ways both on your website (on-page SEO) and off your website (off-page SEO / inbound marketing). The majority of social media platforms give you the double benefit of creating good quality links into your website.

7. Search engines. Keep those search engines happy, the links and posts that you create using social media are indexed in the major search engines, helping both your website's ranking (see above) and also making sure your business is visible in results pages.

8.  Competition. If your business hasn't switched on to the benefits of social media, you can bet your bottom dollar your competitors have. Be there. Be seen. Get competitive advantage.