81 Percent of Businesses Generated Exposure Using Social Media

According the Social Media Marketing Report 81% businesses have increased their exposure using social media. Companies with greater exposure will be more successful. Social media is being utilized by businesses as an inbound marketing resource where current and potential customers interact with your business. There are several ways that businesses are capitalizing on social media. Some of these include the use of coupons, contests, information and customer service.

Coupons:

Offering your customers a coupon in return for “Liking” or “Recommending” your Facebook Page or following your Twitter account.

Contest:

Random prize drawings, photo contests, giveaways to first number of Facebook Page likes, or Twitter followers, etc.

Information:

Offering regularly updated content or interactive resources for your customers can create reoccurring visits and regular engagement.

Customer Service:

People share positive and negative opinions online. Facebook pages or Twitter accounts are an essential way of addressing and responding to customer service issues.

As businesses create their social media marketing campaigns and use social media for customer service, there are always additional ways that it can be used to the benefit of the business. Facebook has dedicated a lot of resources to proving that it’s advertising methods are beneficial to the businesses that use it. I think that since it is in their best interest to sell more ads, I’d take them with a grain of salt. Maybe the companies did generate increased ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ but what does this really mean?

What does this mean to the real bottom-line of the business?

Is there exposure increased solely because they invested thousands upon thousands of dollars?

Can a small business compete and benefit on that level?

What if my budget is small, should I advertise using social media?

These are all questions that I ask myself. What are we to gain from generating all of these likes and shares. I know that a business wants to see more sales. That’s the bottom-line. That is what is going to effect whether a business can continue to pay it’s employees. Not how many shares and shares.

So, use these resources as to may. I consider them to help a large fortune 500 company but not necessarily a small business.

What I would have a business do is create a strategy that will engage their visitors and move them to take action. There is no reason to be on social media “just because”. If that’s why your using it then you’re wasting your time. Unless of course you have time to waste and you’re doing exactly what you need to be doing.

Facebook has compiled several success stories regarding the use of Facebook Pages:

(Update: These resources are no longer available.)

Kia
A Facebook campaign for the auto maker’s Soul leads to a 13-point increase in awareness of the model among people on Facebook.

Budweiser
A campaign around World Cup generates unusually high interaction with the brand with some 2.7 million users engaging with a unique application.

Cheerios
The cereal brand sees more than 124,000 books donated to charity through its Facebook campaign aimed at mothers with young children.

Healthy Choice
The frozen food brand distributed over 50,000 coupons in a “progressive” campaign to engage and grow its Facebook community and deepen its brand reputation for good value.