Thanks to the internet making the world a smaller place, businesses are becoming more and more competitive while, at the same time, increasing their reach. The good news, however, is that the internet also managed to level the playing field, which means that smaller brands can have a strong voice against large, global enterprises, via social media and social listening tools.

NetBase is an award-winning social listening platform which focuses on consumer sentiment. The social media analytics platform has clients all around the globe looking to build their business by connecting with the consumer and running their brand. Every day, NetBase is processing millions of posts made on social media in order to provide actionable business insights designed for product innovation, PR, sales, customer service, and marketing research.

The Role of Social Media Plays

If you own a small business then you are aware of the lengths you need to go in order to promote yourself. Whether you’re offering an innovative service or product, in order to gain customers – and in turn revenue – you need to make people aware of your business. Social media, coupled with social media analytics tools is virtually all you need in order to start promoting your business and improving the sentiment that your audience has about your brand.

The analysis of numbers plays a huge role in social listening – which is basically listening to your audience in order to identify pain points. Social media analytics implies three steps: First of all, you will need to identify main business goals in order to give purpose to your analytics. You have to decide what you’re looking to get out of a social media campaign – whether it’s increasing downloads or traffic, or building a positive perception about your brand.

Next, you will have to determine a few key performance indicators, which are the metrics by which you will measure the success or failure of a campaign. These will depend on what you’re looking to achieve. KPIs can range from engagement to sentiment to conversion, or everything else that aligns with your business objectives.

Finally, the third step implies the actual analysis. Once you know what you’re looking to achieve and how you will measure it, it’s time to check the actual data in order to assess where your business is at, and based on that information you can start making necessary adjustments.

Influencers?

Given their large audience, influencers can not only help increase the customer base of your business, but they can also lend more credibility to your brand. Reports from a couple of years ago show that 74% of people are using social networks when it comes to purchase decisions, and that 49% of people rely on recommendations coming from influencers. When potential customers trust the recommendations coming from an influencer they feel safer about their purchase.

More and more businesses are using influencer marketing campaigns in order to promote their products, with 75% of the marketers claiming to have allocated money designed for influencer marketing. In addition, researched showed that in 2016 marketers spent anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 for every influencer marketing program. While that sound like an impressive number, it’s also worth noting that companies that use influencer marketing make on average $6.50 for every $1 they spent.

Influencer marketing can be a great way to quickly increase your customer base. Pair that with your social media game and social listening tools and the chance of your product reaching a wider audience increases. Regardless of strategy, social media remains an important tool when it comes to marketing, one that you will need to learn to use to your advantage.