INTRODUCTION:
Social media marketing started when companies started sharing their content on social media to drive traffic to their websites and products.
Nowadays, businesses use social media in several ways. For example, a business that is concerned about what people are liking about its brand would monitor social media conversations and respond to the mentions.
A business that wants to understand how it’s performing on social media would social media analytics for analyzing its engagement, and its sales on social media. A business that wants to reach a targeted audience at scale would run highly-targeted social media ads.
Therefore there are plenty of ways to promote your brand in Social Media Marketing for all types of businesses.
DEFINITION:
Social media marketing, or SMM, is defined as a form of internet marketing that involves creating and sharing quality content on social media networks for achieving your branding goals. Social media marketing includes activities that are posting text and image updates, videos, and other engaging content, and also paid to advertise.
To make the full of social media marketing you should know all the necessary steps that can flourish your brand. Let us have a look at how social media marketing works.
HOW THE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING WORKS?
Before writing the social media marketing campaigns, keep your brand’s goals in mind. Starting a social media marketing campaign without any strategy is useless and a waste of time and money.
Here are some things to keep in mind while defining your social media marketing goals:
- What is your plan to achieve through social media marketing?
- Who will be the target audience?
- Where would your target audience hang out and how would they use social media?
- Is there any message that you want to send to your audience with social media marketing?
- Your social media marketing strategy will purely depend upon your business goals.
- For example, a clothing brand can get a lot of attention through Facebook and Instagram.
THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING:
Social media marketing is widely used today and here is why:
- It helps in increasing website traffic.
- Helps in building new conversions.
- It raises brand awareness.
- It creates brand identity.
- It improves communication and interaction with the targeted audience.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TIPS AND TRICKS:
Here are a few social media marketing tips for your social media campaign.
The Content Planning
Content is the essential part in catching the customer’s attraction and before doing anything one should build a social media marketing plan. Consider keyword research and competitive research to help brainstorm content ideas that will engage your target audience.
Social Content
Consistency is the key to anything you are planning to start. Make sure you post regularly and have quality content and valuable information that your customers will like. This content includes your text, images, videos, infographics, customer guides, and more.
A Consistent Brand Image
It enables you to have an image of your brand across different social media platforms. Since each platform has its unique environment and audience, your brand’s core identity should stay consistent.
Content Promotion on Social Media
It is the best place to share your blog content with readers. Once you build a good number of followers on social media, you’ll be able to post all your new content to keep your followers engaged and updated and this quality content will also help you in increasing your number of followers. It’s surprising to see that content marketing and social media marketing benefit each other.
Outside Linking
By using social media marketing you can also link to outside articles. If other sources provide great, interesting information that you think your target audience will enjoy, link that content in your post.
Track of Competitors
Always keep an eye on competitors they can help you in providing great data for keyword research.
If your competitors are using a specific social media marketing strategy that seems to be working for them, considering uniquely doing the same thing.
Crisis Management of Social Media
Things get hard at times and it’s best to have a playbook in place so your employees know how to handle a crisis. You can check out the guide to social media crisis management on the internet with worst-case examples.
CHOOSING THE BEST SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM:
We know for a beginner, it’s quite difficult to select the best platform to promote their brand. Don’t worry we will help you with this.
Facebook – For Social Media Marketing
Facebook is casual, friendly and almost everybody uses it therefore you need an active social media marketing strategy for it. Start by creating a Facebook page of your brand.
Facebook is a relaxing place for people so keep your content light and friendly. But the thing to keep in mind is that organic reach on Facebook is very limited, so consider a cost-effective Facebook ad strategy, which can help you grow your business.
Using Google+ – For Social Media Marketing
Google+ entered the social media world as the competitor of Facebook, but today some communities are very active on Google+.
On Google+ you can upload and share photos, videos, links, and view all your +1s. You can also take advantage of Google+ circles, the Google+ circle allows you to divide your followers into smaller groups, enabling you to share information with some followers while hiding from others. For example, you can create a “loyal-fan” circle, and share special discounts and exclusive offers only with that group of fans.
Using Pinterest – For Social Media Marketing
Today Pinterest is one of the fastest-growing social media marketing platforms. Pinterest’s image-centered platform is ideal for retail, but anyone can take advantage by using Pinterest for social media purposes.
This platform allows brands to showcase their products as well as developing the brand personality with catchy and unique pinboards.
Using Twitter – For Social Media Marketing
Twitter the most-used news platform, it is the social media marketing tool that lets you help you post your updates across the web.
You can combine your official tweets about specials, discounts, and news with fun, engaging tweets. Also, you have to be very active and retweet when a customer has something say anything good about your brand as well as answering queries. Using Twitter as a social media marketing tool revolves mainly around communication, so you should interact actively.
Using LinkedIn – For Social Media Marketing
LinkedIn is a professional social media marketing platform. LinkedIn Groups are a way for entering into a professional world with people that work in similar industries and that also gives the place to share content with like-minded individuals.
Ask your customers to give you brand recommendations on your LinkedIn profile. Recommendations make your business appear more reliable and trustworthy. Also by answering the questions in the Questions section of LinkedIn will help you get your business established.
Using YouTube – For Social Media Marketing
Who does not use YouTube?
It is the best platform for creating and sharing videos, and it is also a powerful social media marketing tool. There are plenty of brands that try to create video content to have their video “go viral,” but that does not always happen.
But if you focus on creating useful, instructive “how-to” videos. These how-to videos will also rank high on the video search results of Google.
Using Reddit – For Social Media Marketing
Reddit is the social media marketing platform that is ideal for sharing compelling content. It has over 2 billion page views a month.
Reddit has great social media marketing potential, but you should keep in mind that unique and engaging content will be welcomed. If you try to submit spammy or overtly sales-focused content and your business could get berated by this extremely tech-savvy community.
If you have content that is unique and informative then you can post it on Reddit to bring great traffic to your website.
Using social media marketing will help you improve site traffic and help your brand to reach more customers, it also provides a valuable venue for better understanding and learning from your target audiences.
PAID SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TIPS:
Since we have discussed the social media marketing platforms now talk about the paid social media marketing.
The paid marketing is a highly cost-effective way to expand your reach. You can choose everything by yourself your content, image, and the placement of the image, the audience, the region, and the action you want most with your ads.
For Example: While promoting a post on Facebook it asks you what you want: more engagements, page likes, or messages.
Facebook Ads
The main thing is to know how to use the platform. If you can handle then Facebook can be one of the most powerful advertising platforms for growing your brand’s name. It will not only just help for raising brand awareness but will also attract more customers. Just keep the goal of your business in your mind and select the strategy according to your goal
For example: The goal of a hair oil brand is to get more messages so it will focus on that point.
Twitter Ads
Many brands are not aware of marketing on Twitter with paid ads it’s certainly not a one-size-fits-all endeavor, and if you cannot handle it well, you can also waste your money.
Social Media Advertising for Small Brands:
You need to learn the strategies of social media advertising on four major networks that are
Google+