What is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is the process of marketing a company’s products and services using social media websites and social networks. SMM has become an important part of any modern digital marketing strategy.
The top social media platforms are currently Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat.
To increase your social media results, you must create interesting and interactive content that your audience can enjoy. Social Media Marketing can be done both ways, Organic and paid promotions.
A social media campaign that is not paid for is called “organic social.” It builds and engages an online audience through free social media resources.
Anything on social media that is influenced by advertising revenue is referred to as paid social. To put it another way, advertising or sponsored posts that brands pay a social media platform to show to audiences other than their followers.
One of the most frequent techniques of charging for this form of promotion is cost-per-click (CPC). Paid and organic social methods work best together to engage and nurture your fans while also expanding your brand’s reach to a larger audience.
How to Use Social Media Marketing?
Use social media to increase sales. Social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram are useful for sharing news, stories, and general observations with your followers. But don’t forget that these platforms can also be used to drive sales!
Use social media to build brand awareness. Brand awareness refers to how many potential customers recognize a certain product or service when it’s mentioned. Although becoming more popular isn’t always the goal of a business, having more people recognize your brand is often good for business because it can help you gain new customers and retain existing ones.
Social media is an excellent way of increasing brand awareness because users tend to follow companies they support or in some way identify with.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing?
Social media is one of the most powerful—and cost-effective—tools you can use to grow your business.
Regardless of your industry or your size, social media networks like Facebook and Twitter allow you to engage with customers, build brand awareness and loyalty, and drive traffic to your website.
Best of all? It’s free! And if you’re looking for more bang for your buck, you can always turn to paid options that help amplify the results from the organic social media marketing you’re already doing.
If you’re not convinced yet, let’s look at five reasons why social media should be a priority in your digital marketing strategy:
1. Reach a large audience
There are over 4.95 billion users on social networks globally. Through social media platforms, you can reach your target audiences who are actively using these platforms. It may take longer to reach audiences organically through social media. Social media ads, on the other hand, can help you reach audiences fast.
2. Build brand awareness
Increased brand awareness and recognition is one of the most significant marketing goals for any organisation. This is due to the fact that buyers prefer to buy things from brands they are familiar with. Many customers are devoted to a brand, which can lead to long-term commercial benefits.
3. Generate leads and sales
Social media has a better lead-to-close rate than any other kind of marketing, according to studies. Your firm will have more opportunities to convert potential customers into actual customers with the increased visibility that comes with being on social media networks.
4. Cost-effective marketing
The most cost-effective aspect of an advertising strategy is probably social media marketing. Almost all social networking platforms allow you to sign up and create a profile for free, and any paid promotions you want to invest in are inexpensive in comparison to other marketing methods.
5. Improve customer service
Excellent customer service is critical to the success of all brands, big and small. Most firms nowadays offer a variety of options for customers to contact them, whether it’s to ask a question, seek additional information, or troubleshoot an issue.
Customers used to contact businesses via phone, email, and even live chat, but now many choose to utilize social media as their major means of communication.
Perform competitor analysis
Performing a competitor analysis is an important element of social media marketing. Now that you have a firm grasp on your own brand and its objectives, it’s time to analyze what your competitors are doing to see if there’s something you can learn from them.
You should look at several factors when analyzing your competition, including:
- Social following: Just looking at the size of their social followings can tell you which channels
they’re focusing on most heavily and how big of an audience they’ve been able to engage with
there. It also gives an idea of how long they’ve been around and how consistent they’ve been
with posting content (since followers tend not to accumulate overnight). - Type of content: Pay attention to the type of posts they’re sharing (blog posts, videos, images,
etc.) and determine whether these seem effective based on the number of
likes/comments/shares each one gets from their audience. Knowing this will provide you with useful insights regarding
what kind of content works best for them (and potentially for your followers as well) and help
guide future decisions about what kinds of posts you should create. You may also notice
Determine your best social media platforms and channels
The next step in your social media marketing plan is to make a list of the best platforms and channels for your business. These will likely include:
When determining which platforms are right for you, consider what type of business you have—B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-consumer). If you’re a B2B company, then LinkedIn is your top platform. This network attracts professionals across all industries and functions, so it’s crucial that you establish a presence here. If you’re B2C, then the choice is between Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Facebook allows companies to add powerful features like customer reviews to their pages; Instagram has fun photo filters for advertising products, and Pinterest can be ideal for capturing leads with its focus on referrals from users clicking through from pins to websites.
Optimize your social media profiles
You’re ready to get your business on social media, but first, you need to know how to optimize your profiles:
- Use keywords. Including keywords in your bio that describe you or your business improves your chances of appearing in relevant searches. Since many users will discover you through search engines rather than by following a link from another site, it’s important to use these keywords strategically throughout each profile.
- Include call-to-action (CTA) buttons on every profile page. Make sure to include CTAs on each of your profiles, such as “Sign up” or “Contact us.” These buttons should be linked to relevant landing pages or contact forms with easy-to-fill-out fields; examples might include newsletter signups, product purchases, or requests for information about your company’s services.
- Add location information. Including specific information about where you are based will help customers locate nearby businesses when they perform local searches on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. In general, this means inputting both the city and state where your business is located.
- Make sure all of your profiles are consistent with each other across channels and updated regularly with accurate details about products and services offered by the business.
