When we think about goals with social media marketing, often we think about a couple of very specific metrics: followers, reach, traffic, sales. And while these are all useful metrics for many businesses, some businesses aren’t looking to work on those areas of their business.

Today, I’m going to share a couple of other things social media can help your business with, which you might not be aware of and how your social media can help address them.

Let’s crack on.

Employee Engagement

The latest trend in HR is “employee engagement”, or, as I like to think of it “are my staff happy”? If your employees are “engaged”, they are less likely to quit, they are more productive and more profitable. From a business perspective, it makes dollars and sense to keep your employees happy. And while there are plenty of factors to keep your staff employed, one way that social media can help is to let your employees be recognised for their hard work by celebrating them on social media. It could be a post your Facebook or LinkedIn Page sharing on the employee of the month, celebrating an award, or acknowledging an awesome project they’ve completed.

Making your employees feel comfortable and confident to share work they are proud of is another way for them to get praise and prestige within their industry or network. Setting up a social media policy to encourage them so that they know what is – or isn’t – allowed for them to post goes a long way to encouraging employees to feel confident in posting.

And of course, helping staff build their network is another thing which can help retain them. If quality staff can be kept within the business, even if they want to move departments – it keeps knowledge in the business. Letting them connect and get to know other staff members can help them connect with other department and consider internal job transitions, rather than external ones.

Related: 12 Employee Engagement Statistics You Need To Know In 2020

Brand perception

With 30% of Aussies looking at a brand’s social media before purchasing, having social media accounts which reflect what you want your brand to say can make a big difference in how a customer perceives you.

Having professional-looking content not only makes you look more reputable and trustworthy and therefore more likely to close the sale but simply having a consistent brand is said to increase revenue by 23%. 

It’s not just about having a nice website: it’s about how someone interacts with your brand at every touchpoint they might discover you across the web, including social media.

The kind of content you share also sets the tone for what working with you is like: if you’re wanting to be seen as a thought leader, posting content where you’re an expert (such as writing blogs or being on podcasts) is a great way to do that. If you want to be seen as approachable or fun, sharing light-hearted content about your industry, product or service will support that. Having a strategy and brand guidelines can help you present your business in the way you want your customers to see it.

Customer retention

We all know the value of customer retention: it’s five times cheaper to keep an existing customer than to find a new one.

How can social media help with keeping customer or client retention? Giving them some visibility, and acknowledging them on social media is not only an effective way to engage them, but it lightens your content calendar, too!

For example, sharing your client’s wins, tagging your clients on social media posts about them, and commenting on their content are all ways to help keep your business top-of-mind to your clients. Whether you’re creating original content about your clients such as a case study or testimonial, or engaging with them on social media – or both – these are all techniques to acknowledge and show them you care about them.

If you sell products, encouraging your customers to post photos of them using your products is a great way to build a two-way relationship. Acknowledging customer-created photos from the official account and requesting to those photos can be a huge compliment! It also goes a long way to educate your customers: on the box or receipt, let them know how they can find you and tag you on social media.

It’s important to remember that social media is often for multiple audiences: people who are brand new and getting to know you; and people who are existing customers. Many businesses only focus on posting to new audiences, but remembering existing audiences is a great way to keep retain those customers.

More visible in Google Search

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the art of getting your website to rank more highly on Google search, with the dream of making it to the first page. Google considers many factors in its search ranking, everything from the words that are on your website, your site speed, to how many websites link to your site and many more factors.

Social media links to your site to not have a direct impact on your search ranking at the time of writing, but having strong social media accounts can impact your SEO, because the more known you are, then your reputation will follow. If you’re regularly posting quality content, if you’re sharing it on social media to extend your reach, people will discover your content and link from their websites. If people trust your opinion, people will stay on your site longer when they arrive from search, or searching your name or business when they Google your industry. Google does consider these factors in their search rankings.

Using social media to benefit your SEO is kind of like the “soft skills” we hear about when we talk about managing teams – it might not directly correlate to a dollar value. Still, it does help to build a happier team, which makes a more profitable company. Social media helps build your brand awareness, which can lead to things that Google does measure, such as links to your site from other quality websites.

Read more: Social Media SEO: What You Need to Know to Grow Your Business

Conversion turnaround time

We all know that social media is a two-way medium, but making the most of social media can cut down the time needed to convert a customer. If we consider the time we take on client calls, or managing sales queries – how much of that time can be saved through setting up more efficient social media management?

Considering 64% of people would rather message than call a business, it makes sense to pour energy into this space, rather than diverting people to a call.

Whether you’re sharing case studies to help someone trust your business, you’ve got a chatbot to help filter out customers who aren’t a great fit, or you’re actively answering customer support queries daily via Messenger, social media can be a great tool to cut down the time needed to manage potential sales and filter the right customers or clients for your business, instead of jumping on calls with customers who aren’t the right fit.

The recap

Social media can be used for all kinds of business objectives – not just awareness or sales. Having a social media strategy and a content plan which underpins the kinds of content you post can help you meet a variety of business goals such as:

• Increasing your staff engagement
• Your customer’s perception of your brand
• Increase in customer retention
• Be more visible in Google Search
• Customer conversion time

Have you used social media to help support your wider business activities, like customer engagement or customer retention? I’d love to hear what’s worked for you!

If your business hasn’t got a social media strategy and thinks it’s time you established a plan of attack, feel free to get in touch. I’d love to help set up your business with a strong foundation to help kick your business goals.

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Want to work with Rachel?

Rachel Beaney is a writer and social media content specialist, helping businesses connect with their audiences.

She’s worked with local, national and global companies, in addition to not-for-profits and government bodies. She loves helping businesses tell their stories with creative and data-driven solutions.

She is based in Sydney, Australia.

Want to work together? Rachel would love to hear from you. Get in touch today.