We’re in 2015, and social media marketing has swiped the Internet off its feet to become a primary platform for online marketing after SEO. Social media marketing is much more than posting a status update or sharing your content. It’s about creating a unique experience that reduces the traditional friction and barriers of communication between the business and its customers and potential customers.

Social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest allow marketers the flexibility of marketing their brand, products, services, and content in the most effective way possible. Let’s take a look at how marketers today are using social media marketing to sell, get qualified leads, and increase website traffic.

Engagement & Connectivity

In August 2015, Facebook became the first social network to cross 1 billion active monthly users. Twitter meanwhile, has 316 million active monthly users, while Pinterest is the fastest independently launched platform to cross 10 million unique monthly users. In other words, engagement on social media has only increased over the past few years, and some of the credit goes to the increase in mobile social networking.

The takeaway here is that more and more people are now connected on social media, which gives online marketers all the more reason to focus their efforts on Facebook and other networks. Through status updates, posts, surveys, tweets, videos, and other activity, you can boost engagement on social networks to expand your outreach.

Branding Prospects

As mentioned before, social media has certainly removed the traditional barriers of communication between the business and the consumer. This allows marketers to create branding strategies that can attain the consent and loyalty of fans and followers on social networks.

In other words, marketers today have the potential to convert their business into a brand through consistency in posts and updates. This enables marketers to create a personality for their company profiles, which can help in getting more fans, followers, and subsequently, more qualified leads and conversions. With integrated shopping now available on Facebook and slowly making its way to other social networks, what will imminently help a brand succeed is its image, which matters a lot in social networking!

Revenue Potential

Only 8 years ago, Facebook introduced ad spaces. Fast forward to today, and almost all social networking platforms provide advertisement opportunities to marketers. What has evolved over these years is the revenue potential from geospatial marketing. Only four years ago, local marketers in Sydney could not sell easily on social media. As of today however, geospatial advertising, sponsored content, and affiliate marketing all work together to help local businesses capitalize on social media’s revenue potential.

Revenue opportunities on social media are available at large today, where mobile usage and conversions are dominating like never before. For a business that is just entering the online foray, social media marketing can help it capitalize its investment at fairly low rates. While tracking the success of posts and content still remains a challenge, there is no denying that leveraging on social media can turn the fortunes of a business around!