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.
