In response to COVID-19’s impact on marketing channels, many marketing teams have turned to social media marketing to connect and engage with audiences. When the COVID-19 pandemic first began, it had a drastic impact on businesses and consumers around the globe. Many businesses were forced to significantly cut their budgets while consumers reduced spending because of lockdowns. As businesses adjusted to the new landscape, many marketers were confronted with the difficult task of reaching audiences online with little to no budget. Luckily, social media has proven to be an ideal marketing resource and offers marketers a variety of unique benefits. Below, Neff, a social media marketing agency based in Philadelphia, will break down some of the many ways social media can help aid marketing teams in 2022.

Build Brand Awareness

Social media is a highly effective way to build brand awareness within targeted groups. Once social media marketers can connect with their target audience, the next phases of the marketing process are often carried out by the audience themselves. While other forms of marketing rely heavily on marketing teams to raise brand awareness, marketers can put out pieces of content and rely on audience members to share posts and improve the content’s reach with social media. Through social media, marketing teams can significantly cut their campaign budgets and instead focus on creating shareable content with which their target audiences can engage.

Measure Marketing Efforts and Improve Brand Authority

Today, most social media platforms and social media scheduling tools allow marketers to track their social media content’s key performance metrics (KPIs). Marketers can also view earned media value (EMV) metrics that show marketers how much organic social engagement and reach would cost if they had paid in ads.

Additionally, many surveys have found that brands that utilize social media are seen as more trustworthy to their target audience than brands that do not. Social media is an excellent way to engage with audience members in an authentic and meaningful way. Using infographics and original content, brands can significantly improve their authority in online spaces.

Enhanced SEO rankings

Social media has become a crucial factor in calculating search engine rankings within the past decade. As SEO best practices are rarely stagnant, brands must adapt to changing guidelines and not solely rely on website optimization for a high ranking. Instead, brands are now turning to social media to improve their rankings and brand awareness. Although social media does not directly contribute to SEO ranking, the links that brands share across social media platforms can greatly increase brand exposure and influence search engine optimization by boosting local SEO, extensive content distribution, and improving online visibility and traffic.