Social media isn't just for users.

Businesses can benefit from

participating in social media as well. Actually, customers expect to
find businesses on social media. Today, more than 140 million businesses
use Facebook products every month to find new customers, hire employees,
or engage with their communities. Businesses and marketers
are participating in social en masse. Companies use social media to
learn from their audiences, build loyalty, promote their products,
and provide customer service. But in order to be successful, businesses have to
remember the two
core aspects of social media. Social media lets people connect and
share or create content. Participating in social media requires
attention to both of these aspects. Yes, businesses can share content and
promotional messages, but they should not forget that social media
is also about connecting with people. And people have come to expect
this connection to businesses and their products and brands. In fact, Charlene Li,
a prominent social media consultant and author, wrote in her book, Groundswell,
companies need connections to their
markets to create long-term loyalty. As social media has become
increasingly prevalent, businesses need to focus on connecting
with and engaging their audience. Each social platform has
its own type of engagement. The way people connect and interact is
slightly different on each platform. To be successful in
building a social presence, companies need to understand what
type of engagement is prevalent on a given platform, and
engage with users in those unique ways. To do that, it's a good idea for businesses
to take some time to observe
and understand the platform and its users, then a business can
authentically participate. Participation means creating value for
your audience, by providing meaningful contributions,
you'll be able to expand your following. We'll go more in depth into tactics for
engagement and content development later in this course,
but for now, it's good to remember that businesses can participate as long as
they focus on connecting, not promoting. As social media platforms have matured,
they've created both free and paid tools for businesses and marketers
to reach and engage their audiences. For example, Facebook.com has created
dedicated pages for businesses. Facebook business pages enable businesses
to have a unique presence online, where they can engage with their
audience through posting content, as Facebook feed posts and stories. Users on
Facebook can engage with
businesses through comments, reactions, one-on-one chat through Messenger, and they
can share content from
businesses with their friends. Facebook is not alone in creating
dedicated tools for business. Here we see Taco Bell's Twitter profile,
where Taco Bell can engage with Twitter community through bite
sized messages known as tweets. An anthropologie's Pinterest Page,
where anthropologie can pin inspirational content for
their Pinterest followers to browse. Platforms like WeChat also
have unique opportunities for businesses to create and
share content with their audience, as you can see here in these
posts on Starbucks WeChat page. Along with page, profiles, and
publishing tools, which are free for businesses to use, most of the more
established social media platforms also have paid promotional offerings.
Advertising on social media can help
companies to extend the reach of their message, increase traffic
to their site, and drive sales. Let's take a look at an ad by Tuft and
Needle, an innovative mattress company that
has had success with ads on YouTube. [MUSIC] Here's what Daehee Park and J.T
Marino, the founders of Tuft and Needle, had to
say about their advertising on YouTube. We've definitely seen
an impact with YouTube. We started our company five
years ago with just $6000 and did 100 million in sales last year. And about a
million people
will be sleeping on a Tuft and Needle mattress by year's end. We believe that we'll
be able to
continue scaling our company to the size we can become using
YouTube the entire way. We absolutely feel like we're
living the American dream. Those are some impressive sales numbers. And that's just
one
example of how marketers benefit from advertising in social media. Let's take a
quick look
at one more ad example. Yankee Candle ran an ad campaign on
Facebook in 2019 to boost brand awareness, acquire new customers, and
enticed lapsed customers to return and make a purchase online. Tyler Conroy,
manager of digital
marketing at Newell Brands, reported that using 21 stop
motion-focused Facebook video ads created in-house, we were able
to beat our revenue plan by 23%, and drive a 307% year over year
increase in sessions to our site. As you can see, there are many ways
businesses can use social media to further their business goals. In the next video,
we'll see how
non-profits are using social media to find their audience and raise awareness,
engage their community and get donations.