Social media management can be utilised by businesses to conduct market research including the identification of new potential clients, customers and referral sources. As Sameer Panjwani, founder of Mondovo explains: “The key to a social presence with a far-reaching impact for your business is social media market research to carefully look for your audience rather than broadcasting your messages aimlessly and to whoever is willing to listen.”
And as Adam Coombs explains on Unamo.com: Social media market research is the process of gathering quantitative and/or qualitative data from social media platforms to understand social, consumer, or market trends. Coombs argues that many businesses now use social media for market research as it produces high return on investment (ROI), immediate and in some cases historical data, while returning results from independent sources.
Case in Point: Twitter
There are several social media platforms which businesses can use to conduct research to identify prospective clients, customers and referral sources. But for purposes of example, I’ll use Twitter. As Jimmy Rodela explains on Business 2 Community: “As a marketing tool, few can rival the benefits Twitter can offer. Apart from helping you significantly improve your market visibility; it gives you the opportunity to personally interact with potential customers”. Importantly, as he explains, getting more clients from Twitter is “actually quite simple if you know your way around that platform”.
Twitter allows users to identify potential clients, customers and referral sources, via, as Rodela details, Twitter directories, search and hashtags, among others.
Social Media: It’s about more than brand building
As I’ve detailed above, more companies are utilising social media to identify clients, customers and potential referral sources. Several business-friendly social sites can be utilised for this purpose. Twitter being just one of them.
While building your brand awareness on Twitter among potential clients, customers, referral sources and journalists focused on your industry – social media managers can also be an active part of the sales funnel – collecting data about potential clients, customers and referral sources. This often high-quality and timely data can then be utilised by your sales or business development teams to build more client accounts.
For any business active or considering being active on social media – it’s important to be aware that your social media presence can be utilised not only to expand your businesses brand awareness – but it can also be a major resource for building new revenue as an integral part of your sales or business development team.
