Are you tired of the thought of how to make your business reach a new potential?Are you struggling to gain new customers for your business? Then you have come to the right place. In today’s blog here we will take you through all you need to know about before getting into SMM(Social Media Marketing).
Social media:
Before getting to know about Social Media Marketing(SMM) you need to know about what Social Media is?. Social media refers to a set of web 2.0 platforms that have the ability to share information through one another and also gain access to the information posted by people and then it also allows you to gain feedback from the community and give back to them in one way or another. You can also share ideas and images through virtual networks and communities.
Nowadays more than 93% of the world uses social media on a daily basis to communicate or send images or ideas to each other. To name some of the most popular social media are YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and others.
Social media began as a platform for people and family members to communicate with each other despite living far away from each other, it soon started to expand its services after gaining some popularity. MySpace became the first platform to gain 1 million plus active users in 2004.
Despite this Social Media bloomed after the emergence of Facebook and Twitter since they provided instant access to the global world.
Social media is divided into 4 main categories for use by its users: Social networks,
Media-sharing networks, community based networks, review networks.
Social Media Marketing(SMM):
Now that you are aware of what social media is, so now we can proceed to what Social Media Marketing(SMM) is?.
Social Media Marketing(SMM) is the part of digital marketing apart from SEO that refers to the use of specialized strategies that are designed to promote your product and brand to a larger audience by using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, linkedin, etc. Social media helps us with promotion of products which is termed as Social Media Marketing(SMM), if interaction is done with the customers which may include taking feedback or reverting back to the queries or with comments then it’s also media marketing. Creation of engaging content that displays the essence of your brand and flaunts the story of the brand, it also comes under the jurisdiction of Online marketing.
While creating and constant posting is absolutely a necessity for building a brand but doing strategic posting opens up a new level of growth for the business. To do this you can make use of strategies that include:
- Nurturing and enhancing your profile to improve its visibility
- Creation of brand specific content to enhance the visibility and attract attention of the public.
- Maintaining an interaction with the audience in the form of comments, messages and shares.
- Maintaining the reputation of the brand.
- Collaborating with influencers, connecting and engaging with followers to enhance your brand value.
Social Media Marketing(SMM) also makes use of paid advertisements that can help you reach a larger audience in a very short period of time but in order to do all this you need to have the tools and skills required for social network management.
Types of social media marketing(SMM):
As you may know that there is no one size fits all solution for all, so keeping that theory in mind we can proceed to understand the different types of social media marketing(SMM) that are at our disposal.
- Content marketing: It is the type of internet marketing which makes use of engaging content like blogs, videos and articles shown to the audience in order to provide useful information to your followers to gain their appreciation.
- Influencer marketing: In this type of digital marketing you collaborate with social media stars who have attained significant audience to promote your product so that it reaches a large amount of audience without significant effort. Influencer media marketing also helps you to build trust for your business. This is the newest form of Social Media Marketing(SMM)
- Advertising: It is the biggest form of internet marketing that makes use of running ads on social media platforms that include Facebook, Instagram, linkedin to run social media campaigns which can be used to reach a larger audience and build customer loyalty to the brand. This enables users to target specific audiences of different demographics, have different interests and show unique behaviour.
- Live streaming: Form of online marketing that revolves around the usage of live videos to interact with the audience in real time.
- Social media management: creation and posting of regular content for users and maintaining interactions with users and followers in the form of messages and comments thus creating a stronger bond with the audience.
How does online marketing model works:
Social media has become an integral part of social advertising due to its ease of usage and cost-effectiveness. Due to its cost-effective structure any size of business, maybe large or small, can make use of social media to market their product and reach a wider audience. In order to do so you need to make use of strategies that are specific to your business which include getting to know your audience and creating engaging content that will resonate with your audience. Here are some pointers for you to know before getting into Social Media Marketing(SMM).
- Creation of social profiles: Create all the necessary profiles for your business keeping your audience in mind. This can include all and any social medias like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, etc. During the creation of the profiles you need to make sure that your profiles are equipped with all the necessary details like business name, logo and brief detail of the company in order to make it a complete profile.
- Creating and maintaining relationship with your audience: Social Media Marketing(SMM) has opened up a new dimension for creating relations with your audience unlike traditional marketing since social media acted as a two way communication platform allowing communication between customer to customer or between a business firm and customer possible. Traditional marketing could only form relations with customers that came to purchase stuff but by using digital marketing you could also build relations using referrals from the previous customers.
- Creating and sharing engaging content: Creation of sticky content which is the marketing name for engaging content which is a key factor in Social Media Marketing(SMM). Engaging content gains user attention and increases the odds of users buying the product and services that are offered and sharing the product. This also allows our ad to reach a wider audience that could not be reached thus increasing the chances of sale. Content can be identified according to different values for example, entertaining, Educational or Inspirational gaining users interest. Social media should represent your brand’s identity in the best way possible to gain the most viewership.
- Utilisation of relevant hashtags and keywords to increase visibility: Hashtags and keywords play an important role in increasing the visibility of your content. This can be seen by the fact that if content is made with relevant keywords and hashtags representing your content then it will increase the probability of your content to be shown on top of the search when the audience makes a search on social media platforms relating to your keyword.
- Ads are your friend not an enemy: Social Media Marketing(SMM) includes paid ads including Google ads or Meta which are the two most popular formats of paid ads. Running social media campaigns on your social media accounts can help in boosting your visibility and reach which would be difficult if done organically. Paid ads also provide you with the ability of targeting specific demographics based on location, age, interests, gender and behaviour thus allowing you to reach a specific audience. The best part being that you don’t need a large budget to run paid ads, you can start with a small amount as a test then go from there.
- Analysing your performance for better results: This is the most important critical step in social media management since it is used to track the performance of your metrics related to customers. This is done to see how our social media is performing or how well our campaigns are doing. By doing this we are able to modify our strategies and increase performance thus helping us keep ahead of the competition. You can track metrics like engagement, impressions, reach, referrals and etc. you can also determine the ROI so that you can make better amendments to increase your ROI for future campaigns.
How is Social Media Marketing(SMM) better from traditional marketing:
Ever since the entry of Social Media Marketing(SMM), it has changed the way marketing works. Before you could only reach a limited audience and had a limited interaction with the audience but now you can connect with your audience in real time which has further enhanced the value of the brands and reach to the wider audience. Talking about the advantages here are some of the advantages for you to know before taking a chance at Social Media Marketing(SMM).
- Better visibility and engagement: Social media has the power to help you reach a global audience and make real time talks with clients in real time. This was not not achievable by using traditional marketing. By using social media campaigns you can increase the visibility of your brands.
- Be on top of the market trends: Unlike traditional marketing where it would take a long while before you figure out the ongoing trend while by using social media as a medium to find and join the ongoing trends which will thus strengthen the presence of your brand
- Better understand your competitors: Social media allows you to study your competitors and helps you stay on top of the competitors by using social media management tools which could not be done in case of traditional marketing. It helps you learn about what works with your audience likes and dislikes.
- Increase traffic to your website: By adding links of your website to your social media you can generate traffic for your website which can then help you drive sales.
Frequently asked questions:
What is Social Media Marketing(SMM)?
Social Media Marketing(SMM) is the form of marketing that allows you to have the power to promote your brand to a wider audience which was not possible using the traditional form of marketing. It also helps you in getting better connecting with your audience since social media is a form of two way communication allowing you to take input and respond to the customers in the form of messages and comments.
Why is Social Media Marketing(SMM) important for a business?
Social Media acts as a very powerful tool for your business since it allows you to by increasing your brand awareness, connect with customers, generate leads and increase sales.
What are the main steps to remember in Social Media Marketing(SMM)?
Here are the steps that you should know:
1. Create your strategy: Form a robust strategy on what sort of content you will create and what will be your audience, making a strategy also helps you scale your social media.
2. Have an idea of who your audience is: Understand what sort of content your audience likes and who the audience is that you are trying to reach.
3. Creation of engaging content: Create and post your content in such a way so that it intrigues the audience and makes them stop, view and share your content.
4. Engaging with your audience by using social media as a platform: Social media acts as a gateway that provides you with the opportunity of interacting with your audience.
5. Analyse your performance: While in traditional media there was no way of checking and adjusting on how their campaign did but by making use of social media you can even analyse your campaign which can then later be adjusted to fetch better results.
Are paid ads any use in Social Media Marketing(SMM)?
Paid ads can be a very powerful aid to your social media account since they allow you to create awareness, bring traffic and drive sales for your business.
Key takeaways:
- Social Media Marketing(SMM) has become a very important tool in the marketing sector for those who want to advertise themselves to a wider audience outside of their local zones.
- Brand strengthening and brand outreach can also be achieved via social media marketing.
- Unlike traditional marketing, social media marketing allows you to have real time connections with your audience and help you to better understand the intent of your audience. This info can be backed up by Mr Shashank Goyal.
