Semalt's Guide To Social Media Marketing
Table of Content
- Introduction
- What is Social Media Marketing?
- Before Delving Into Social Media Marketing
- Social Media Platforms and Marketing
- Function of Social Media Marketing Services
- Tracking Your Social Media Campaigns
- Creation of Winning Paid Social Media Campaigns
- Creation of Engaging Content for the Brand
- Analysis of Brand's Current Social Media Status
- Conclusion
1. Introduction
Social media is the "it" in this present age; virtually everyone is on social media now. Although, the age group, as well as the gender of people on different social media platforms, vary according to the function-ability of the platform to the individuals. Regardless, there is no doubt that social media is a way of reaching out to people and hitching them as customers. The effectiveness of social media marketing in boosting businesses is why there are a growing number of marketing-based campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Tiktok, etc. these days.
Your business needs to have a well-defined social media presence that entirely reflects your brand personality. This is so your business can remain relevant in this global internet age. Check companies that have not been able to keep up with the tide of social media marketing and you'll discover that these businesses are currently lagging behind in their respective industries.
2. What is Social Media Marketing (SMM)?
Social media marketing is a business strategy that uses social media platforms to retain existing customers, while expanding to accommodate new and prospective clients. This strategy is effective in building strong ties with existing customers and potential ones. You can use this method to interact and engage with your customers/clients, get new customers/clients, and also boost sales and revenue.
Some view SMM as a form of business advertisement; this is true to a certain extent. SMM achieves its advertisement technique through the creation and sharing of brand-related content on social media platforms.
In addition to that, SMM also uses social media-based paid ads to generate leads and achieve its goal. The content is usually posted on the brand's social media platforms in the form of images, videos, texts, blog posts, and other infographics.
3. Before Delving Into Social Media Marketing (SMM)
There is no doubt that social media marketing is effective for businesses and organizations, but that effectiveness can only be achieved if the SMM is optimized and accessed strategically.
Before you start out creating SMM campaigns, understand the goals you want to achieve. Do you want to only build your follower-base, or you want to connect strongly with new and existing customers? Understand your type of business and your targeted audience, i.e., B2B or B2C.
This would determine the right SMM approach to achieve your goal. It would also help you know the best platform to use to reach out to your targeted audience. For instance, you cannot expect to reach out to middle-aged citizens and older age groups on Tiktok and Snapchat; you would find them more on Facebook.
Asides from understanding your business type and targeted audience, you need to pay attention to your brand and its personality. You need to ensure that your SMM approach matches your brand style. This would give your business a unique personality that can be identified easily.
4. Social Media Platforms and Marketing
Depending on your targeted audience, your most-focused social media platform might vary. Yours might be Facebook, while another brand's own might be Twitter. Although you should focus the most on your targeted customers/clients' most-used platform, you still need to have a strong presence on other major social media platforms or those relevant to your industry.
The following are the basic social media platforms where brands usually get their social media marketing approach started. Asides the basic ones, Youtube, Linkedin, Pinterest, Nextdoor, Quora, Reddit, and more are other social media platforms you can take advantage of to cultivate your brand's social media marketing.
Facebook is known to be one of the most popular social media platforms and is seen as the most encompassing. It is viewed as all-encompassing because people of diverse age groups, genders, social and political status make their way to the platform.
For streamlined use, the most active users of Facebook are between 24 and 55+, and yes, both men and women of that age group use it. Facebook is an efficient way of businesses drawing in social medias users for boosted traffic and significant financial leads.
Through this platform, you can engage your followers using text, photos, videos, GIFs, memes, and even blog posts. Facebook has a specialized system for its paid ads; this makes ordering paid ads easy. Also, Facebook would send your ads to Instagram as well since they are both products of the same organization.
Given Facebook's set up, it can be used in generating local SEO signals, but that also depends on how you strategically position your campaigns. Let Semalt bring your SEO alive not just on social media but also, your website.
To build your presence on Facebook, you need to update topnotch content that would intrigue your target market. This would help keep your follower-base engaged. They would interact by liking your posts and commenting; they would leave reviews on the review session of your Facebook page. Above all, they would share your posts, thereby getting their own followers to notice you.
Instagram is believed to be the second most popular social media platform. About 74% of its users log in daily, which makes it a useful platform for social media marketing. Instagram was mostly used frequently by men and women of 13-35, particularly women, but its users' age/gender has continued to shift in recent times.
The most effective way to market your brand on Instagram is to create a strong presence for your business. Update your content frequently; let your bio contain candid yet interesting information about your brand. Just like Facebook, Instagram users prefer infographics; they hardly engage with long posts without graphics. This is why you should use fanciful infographics to get your message and information across to your followers as well as potential followers/customers.
Also, use Instagram influencers to boost your brand awareness. In addition to your engagement strategies, you should harness Instagram's paid ads approach to get your brand out to a more significant number of people. Create strategies for your SSM on Instagram, and before long, you will notice a considerable difference.
Twitter is an intriguing social media platform through which more businesses and organizations are increasing their brand awareness and boosting their customers' engagement. Brand awareness and brand engagement are achieved on Twitter through "follows, tweets/retweets, favorites and replies."
If you can position your social media marketing strategy well on Twitter, you will notice a significant increase in your brand awareness, new customers/clients addition, and sales/revenue. The key with Twitter is consistency, prompt action, and buzz frenzy.
Concerning consistency, your brand needs to continually stay in the face of its followers through frequent tweeting of brand-related information and commentaries on trending matters. You need to engage them by posting interactive infographics and short texts that will incite them to respond to your tweets. You should also be swift in taking actions whenever customers call you out on twitter.
Let them air their grievances and then try to solve them as soon as possible; the customers would appreciate this. Besides, the potential customers seeing this would be inclined to join the train because they know your brand would treat them courteously. Remember that it does not take much to trend on twitter; aim to trend for positive reasons, it would do your business lots of good.
5. The function of Social Media Marketing Services (SMMS)
• Analysis of Brand's Current Social Media Status
A topnotch SMMS would first carry out an analysis of your brand's current stage and level in terms of social media presence before setting out to introduce any social media marketing strategy. Such service would first carry out market analysis to understand your brand, its competitors, and the targeted audience before creating SMMS. After this, the SMMS can develop strategies and design new approaches that would boost the brand's awareness.
• Creation of Engaging Content for the Brand
Since the social media marketing service knows how to get the best of SMM, it would start it off by creating unique yet engaging content for your brand. While achieving amazing content engagement with your brand's social media followers, the service is also charged with projecting your brand's unique voice.
The social media marketing outfit will create content for your brand and also schedule the content for timely posting. The marketing service would interact with your brand's active social media followers by replying to their chats and comments. They are also responsible for monitoring your brand's social media presence.
• Creation of Effective Paid Social Media Campaigns
A topnotch social media marketing service should be able to customize various paid campaigns for your brand to boost its social media presence and increase revenue. The outfit would create high-performing ads designed at strategically reaching the targeted audience. They would reach out to social media influencers associated with your brand's industry and get them to endorse your products and services.
• Tracking Your Social Media Campaigns
Any social media marketing service you hire is charged with consistently optimizing your social media platforms and tracking your followers' engagement. The marketing outfit would track your organic and paid campaigns while analyzing the leads you have gained since the social media marketing strategy was introduced. They also monitor your social media reviews and feedbacks, mentions, and likes.
Overall, the social media marketing service will synchronize your social media platforms with your brands' website to help you get the best out of your social media presence and campaign. Semalt can help you synchronize your social media platforms with your website to gain amazing leads.
6. Conclusion
In today's world, businesses need to optimize their social media platforms to keep up with clients' expectations and customers. To stay competitive in your industry, you need an efficient social media marketing service, considering how integrated the world is today. With Semalt's vast experience and expertise in social media marketing, you can achieve your business goals, establish an active and rewarding online presence.