Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. This involves publishing great content on your social media profiles.
The major social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat.
Social media marketing is a powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach prospects and customers. Your customers are already interacting with brands through social media, and if you’re not speaking directly to your audience through social platforms, you’re missing out! Great marketing on social media can bring remarkable success to your business.
What is The SMM?
Social media marketing, or SMM, is a form of internet marketing that involves creating and sharing content on social media networks in order to achieve your marketing and branding goals. Social media marketing includes activities like posting text and image updates, videos, and other content that drives audience engagement.
Start With The Plan
As in my opinion planning is everything if you’re going to do something. Same apply on the Social Media Marketing, before you begin creating social media marketing campaigns, consider your business’s goals. Starting a social media marketing campaign without a social strategy in mind is like wandering around a forest without a map. You might have fun, but you’ll probably get lost. So make sure you before starting SMM you have asked these questions to yourself.
- What are you hoping to achieve through social media marketing?
- Who is your target audience?
- Where would your target audience hang out and how would they use social media?
- What message do you want to send to your audience with social media marketing?
Very important thing is to choose your target audience very wisley. If you’re advertising your product to the wrong audience then it’ll be useless believe me you’re wasting your time and energy. So choose it correctly.
Alrighty ready to get started with marketing on social media? Ok here we go. Take a look at a few social media marketing tips to kick off your social media campaigns.
Social Media Content Planning
Building a social media marketing plan is very essential. Consider keyword research and competitive research to help content ideas that will interest your target audience. You can learn more about the keyword research in my previous blog – Keyword research for SEO
Great Social Content
Consistent with other areas of online marketing, content reigns supreme when it comes to social media marketing. Make sure you post regularly and offer truly valuable information that your ideal customers will find helpful and interesting. The content that you share on your social networks can include social media images, videos, infographics, how-to guides and more.
A Consistent Brand Image
Using social media for marketing enables your business to project your brand image across a variety of different social media platforms. While each platform has its own unique environment and voice, your business’s core identity, whether it’s friendly, fun, or trustworthy, should stay consistent.
Social Media for Content Promotion
Social media marketing is a perfect channel for sharing your best site and blog content with readers. Once you build a loyal following on social media, you’ll be able to post all your new content and make sure your readers can find new stuff right away.
Tracking Competitors
It’s always important to keep an eye on competitors. They can provide valuable data for keyword research and other social media marketing insight. If your competitors are using a certain social media marketing channel or technique that seems to be working for them, consider doing the same thing, but do it better! And I think you know how to do it better.
Now as we go further and learn about how to choose the best social media platform for marketing I want first you take an overview of social media. Ok alright,
Even though you hear about the same few social networks all of the time, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any others out there.
Wikipedia alone lists over 200 of them. Check it out here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_services
Surprised ? Me too. There are more than 200 networks. The world of social media is changing incredibly fast. If you’re just getting started on social media marketing, you can’t afford to not have a Facebook page or a Twitter account cause these two are the big bulls of social media platforms.
Want to take a look at some key social media terms.
Content : Content is whatever you are posting. It can be a Facebook status update, a photo on Instagram, a tweet, something to pin on a board on Pinterest, and so on.
Context : If your content is king, then context is god. Consider you give very important information but it is in the middle of your mammoth content then very few people will read it. Your context should stand out more clear in your 3000 word long content.
Hashtags : By now, they’re a very common form that people use to add meta information on almost all social media channels. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest all use hashtags to let you describe the topic of your content or mark it as part of current trends.
Shares : Shares are the currency of the social media world. Shares are all that matters on social media. People will keep talking to you about impressions, click-through rates, and potential reach. But none of these tell you whether people actually pass on what you have to say. When people engage and interact with your content, that’s good. But, when they share it, that is the time when you celebrate.
Engagement : This is a general term that means that people interact with the content that you produce. It can be a like, a reaction, a comment, or a share. All of these are good, but the shares are where it’s at.
Choosing the Best Social Media Platforms
Now is the time to choose the best social media platforms for marketing here’s a brief overview about how to use social media for marketing according to each platform’s unique user base and environment. Different social media marketing sites require different approaches, so develop a unique strategy tailored for each platform.
Facebook : Facebook’s casual, friendly environment requires an active social media marketing strategy. Start by creating a Facebook Business Fan Page. You will want to pay careful attention to layout, as the visual component is a key aspect of the Facebook experience.
Facebook is a place where people go to relax and chat with friends, so keeping that in mind makes your tone light and friendly.
Instagram : Since Instagram’s creation, it has grown into the ultimate platform for sharing photos. Over 800 million monthly users are active on the site. More than 60 million photos are posted each day, and 1.6 billion daily “likes” are given. There’s also a large number of influencers on the site with a massive amount of followers. And with the right plan, you can become an influential brand, too. You need to post the right kind of content to stay relevant to current followers while also bringing in new ones. First you need to switch your profile into a business account, with the help of free instagram tools you can boost your insights. Through Insights, you can view statistics like impressions, engagement data, and more.
Google+ : Google+ entered the scene as a Facebook competitor, but it now serves a more niche audience. It won’t work for everybody, but some communities are very active on Google+. On Google+ you can upload and share photos, videos, links, and view all your +1s. Also take advantage of Google+ circles, which allow you to segment your followers into smaller groups, enabling you to share information with some followers while barring others.
Note that Google has announced plans to retire Google+, so plan accordingly! Oops!
Pinterest : Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social media marketing trends. Pinterest’s image-centered platform is ideal for retail, but anyone can benefit from using Pinterest for social media purposes or sales-driving ads.
Pinterest allows businesses to showcase their product offerings while also developing brand personality with eye-catching, unique pinboards. When developing your Pinterest strategy, remember that the social network’s primary audience is female. If that’s your demographic, you need a presence on Pinterest!
Twitter : Twitter is the social media marketing tool that lets you broadcast your updates across the web. Follow tweeters in your industry or related fields, and you should gain a steady stream of followers in return.
Mix up your official tweets about specials, discounts, and news with fun, brand-building tweets. Be sure to retweet when a customer has something nice to say about you, and don’t forget to answer people’s questions when possible.
LinkedIn : LinkedIn is one of the more professional social media marketing sites. LinkedIn Groups is a great venue for entering into a professional dialog with people in similar industries and provides a place to share content with like-minded individuals. It’s also great for posting jobs and general employee networking. Encourage customers or clients to give your business a recommendation on your LinkedIn profile. Recommendations make your business appear more credible and reliable for new customers.
YouTube : YouTube is the number one place for creating and sharing video content, and it can also be an incredibly powerful social media marketing tool. Many businesses try to create video content with the aim of having their video “go viral,” but in reality those chances are pretty slim. Instead, focus on creating useful, instructive “how-to” videos. These how-to videos also have the added benefit of ranking on the video search results of Google, so don’t under-estimate the power of video content!
Reddit : Reddit, or similar social media platforms such as Stumble Upon or Digg, are ideal for sharing compelling content. With over 2 billion page views a month, Reddit has incredible social media marketing potential, but marketers should be warned that only truly unique, interesting content will be welcomed. Posting on Reddit is playing with fire, submitting spammy or overtly sales-focused content and your business could get berated by this extremely tech-savvy community.
Using social media in marketing does more than improve site traffic and help businesses reach more customers.
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