Why be social?

The statistics for social media are stunning.  Facebook alone has 2.5 billion active users.  That’s a third of the world’s population.  And in the same way as we need to rethink our stereotypes about our vegan customers, we also need to rethink who is on social media.  According to the latest figures, more than half of all pensioners in the UK are now on Facebook.  Before you say that proves it’s not a platform for young people any more, 76% of 18–24 year olds have a Facebook account also.

We spend on average 1 hour 50 minutes on social media every day and the average user has 7 different social media accounts.  These might be sites you are familiar with like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but also more recent platforms like TikTok and Snapchat.  Somewhere out there, your customers are going to be waiting and watching on social media.  And that’s the reason social media has become so vital for businesses.  It’s not just that your customers are out there waiting – it’s also that it’s easy for you to find exactly the people you want to connect with pro-actively.  The reason companies put their budgets into social media instead of TV and print adverts is all to do with targeting.  On social, you can target and pay for your message to reach only the people you want to talk to.  And that’s why I’m looking at paid social media first, because this is something that a lot of people don’t think about when running a social media page for their business.  You can put a lot of effort into posting on social media, but if these messages are only shown to people who have liked and followed your page already then you’re missing the vast majority of potential customers on the platform.