Businesses in all industries are contemplating more and more to add social media to their marketing plans. As a dealership, you may be wondering if there is really any value in using social media. If any of the following statements illustrate your worries about social media, then this article is especially for you.

“I don’t want people to know what I am doing.”

“I can’t mix personal and business.”

“I don’t understand why anyone would want to hear what I have to say.”

“None of my contacts are on social media.”

There are plenty of other reasons why any business owner may question the value of social media in marketing. In fact, the list is as long as the day. As a dealer principle or a marketer of copiers, document management and managed print services, you may struggle knowing how to make it all work.

Before we talk about the three key reasons for social media in marketing your business, let’s first look at the statistics of social media so that we can build a bit of a framework for the discussion. Certainly, we could write many more data points, but you’ll get the idea from these five.

96 percent of Americans use Facebook (Business Insider)
46 million Americans check social media profiles daily (Edison Research)
50 percent of SMB owners report gaining new customers through Social Media (Mediabistro)
51 percent of Facebook Users and 64 percent of Twitter users are more likely to buy from the brands they follow (Mediabistro)
Of SMB decision makers that use social media, 86 percent use Facebook, 41 percent use LinkedIn & 33 percent use Twitter (Zoomerang)

Even with these statistics, the reality is there are really three primary reasons why you should seriously consider social media as a part of your overall marketing strategy.

Search Engine Optimization

When other Websites link to your Website, you get a vote for your credibility and relevance. Marketers focused on search engine optimizers have actively built links to generate search engine credibility. In fact, spammers love this tactic as they can often get many links in comments on other people’s blogs and Websites.

When posting a link in your social media channels, your link becomes another in-bound link to your website and therefore another vote for your Website’s credibility. If those in your network share that link, it means that you have even more in-bound links.

However, link building is not the only benefit. Social media posts (profiles, articles, etc.) are indexed in the search engines (assuming your privacy settings don’t prevent them). Often, your social media profiles and status updates (tweets) will even appear above your website in the search engines… which will then have a chance of driving traffic to you.

But, don’t forget, search engine optimization does not mean you’ll get traffic.

Traffic Generation

When I started my blog at www.coreysmith.ws, I had no rankings in the search engines. In fact, it took Google nearly 30 days to know that my new blog even existed. It was even longer before any of my keywords were ranked enough to start generating traffic. Long before the search engines took notice, I was able to garner a fair amount of traffic. I was able to gain this traffic through posts to my social networks.

Even now after the rankings in my personal blog are growing and people are seeing my blog more often in the search engines, I can look back and analyze my traffic and see a direct correlation of traffic due to posts in social media. When I post a link to my blog, depending on what time of day and how compelling my message is, I can see a reasonably consistent amount of new traffic. If the post on my blog is particularly compelling, then I can see that number double or even triple because of the sharing of other people within my network.

Don’t forget: just because you get traffic, it does not mean you are going to make a sale.

Relationship Building

The reality is, social media’s primary purpose is to be social. However, it’s more than just the social aspect. It’s about actively fostering relationships with new people.

Do not fall into the trap of saying, “None of my friends are on social media.” Would you consider saying, “I’m not going to the networking event because none of my friends are there?” Virtually all social networks that have been built, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were founded on the idea that you can connect with people whom you’ve never met before.

The hallmark of social media for business is that you can create and build new relationships. Whether it’s LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, you have an opportunity to build new relationships with people that you don’t already know.

It is through the conversations in social media that you build relationships. It is through those relationships that you make transactions.

The Bottom Line

There is a catch to all this. It is wonderful that you can gain a stronger presence in the search engines and you can garner new traffic to your Website. However, the requirement to this success is building strong relationships.

Google, Bing, etc. understand the influence of your network. The stronger your influence, the more weight they will give to your posts. The more people you influence, the more traffic you will generate.

You can also damage your influence by posting only links to your Website and never providing any value. This activity is common among spammers and people learn to tune out. No matter how many people follow/friend you, if you are always asking them to do something (go to a link) and never return anything (information, engagement, humor, etc.) they will begin to ignore you.

The more friendly you are the more people will take notice. The more social you are in social media, the more search engines will like you and the more traffic you will generate.

Corey Smith is the author of Do It Right: A CEO’s Guide to Web Strategy and Chief Web Architect for Dealer Marketing Systems. Corey will be conducting a Social Media Boot Camp at ITEX. Sign up here: itexsocialmedia.eventbrite.com