Social media is becoming an indispensable part of the marketing mix for many businesses and one of the best ways to reach customers and clients.
Social media platforms, such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have a number of benefits for companies and are fast overtaking traditional media formats such as print and TV ads, brochures, flyers and email campaigns. On top of that social media is now an integral part of your organic SEO efforts because of the links that social medial can naturally generate to your site. Here are just a few of the many advantages social media has over traditional media.
Low cost
Traditional media can be extremely expensive, especially for small businesses. In contrast, most social media platforms are completely free to use, the only cost to businesses being the time spent on updating profiles and interacting with contacts. This is one of the initial benefits of social media, in that it is accessible to more business owners because of the low cost barrier of entry.
The low cost of entry to social media makes it particularly useful to small businesses who often find the costs associated with traditional media prohibitive.
Businesses can use social media to create and distribute promotional material, such as articles, videos and audio for a fraction of the money it would cost for this content to appear in the press, on the radio or on TV. And distributing this content via social media provides you with more opportunities to entice others to link to your content. This is a great way to enhance your organic SEO authority.
Unlimited access
In many ways, social media levels the playing field for businesses as it is accessible to anyone, regardless of company size, turnover and contacts. Social media tools are open to anyone, whereas reaching the traditional media often requires a lot of money and a good network of media industry contacts.