Why you should be using social media in your business

I’m delighted to be writing for the UK Newspaper and I’m looking forward to sharing my social media knowledge with you over the coming months.  Hopefully, this will help you with your business social media channels, make you consider a career in social media or just encourage you to discover new ways to use it in ways you enjoy.  

How I discovered my passion

I haven’t always worked in this field and for a long time I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.  Aged 31 I went to uni as a mature student but dropped out after 18 months as I hated it. People talk about university being an amazing experience but that wasn’t how it was for me.  I didn’t have a back-up plan but knew uni life wasn’t for me.  

Always keen to take the positive from any situation, I recognised that the one part of my studies that I really loved was learning about social media and how it can be used in business. So, I decided to become a freelance social media manager supporting local businesses in my area.

Why I love it

I love social media for business for many reasons, the main one being the fact that it’s accessible to all.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a huge global corporation or working from a laptop in your kitchen, you can still access all the platforms and connect with your audience.  If you’re not using social media consistently in your business here are my top reasons why you should be:

Some reasons you should be using social in your business

• Increase brand awareness

Recent data from July 2022 shows that 59% of the world’s population (around 4.7 billion people) have a presence on social media.  This means there is a wealth of potential customers and clients hanging out on the worldwide web that you can connect with for free.

• Makes your brand human

There is a saying that ‘people buy from people’ and what better way of letting people know who they will be buying from or working with, than getting yourself out there on social media.  When using your social channels make sure you show your personality, let people get to know you, you don’t need to give people full details of your life for them to get a feel for who you are, how you work and if they feel a connection with you. (Set your own boundaries about how much you are comfortable sharing e.g., do you want to share insight into your personal life, children, hobbies or are these things you only like sharing on your personal pages?)

• Cost effective

As we enter the cost-of-living crisis, getting more bang for your buck has never been more desirable.  That’s one of the many wonderful things about using social media for business, no matter how much money you have available you can still use it to connect with potential clients and customers.  Yes, there are paid options such as Facebook ads and sponsored posts but even with a budget of £0 you can still make an impact.

Over the next 12 months I’ll be explaining lots more ways that you can use social media, covering everything from how to use each channel effectively to how to look after your mental health online.

Let me know how you use social media and if there are any topics, you’d like me to cover?

You can find out more about me and what I do at www.green-umbrella.biz