What is Social media marketing | Social media is best Marketing | facebook

The primary role of those who work in social media marketing is to publish content on social media platforms, engage with followers, and conduct marketing campaigns through testing social media analytics to analyze success; Also running  advertisements on social media.

What is Social media marketing?

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which uses social media apps as a marketing tool.

These social media platforms enable brands to engage with their audiences

create a brand;

increased sales;

drive traffic to the website; and

Build a community of fans to share and engage with content.

Producing relevant material that users will share with their own networks helps brands increase their exposure. It also extends their reach toward fans, potential customers and even possible employees when used as a recruitment tool. Some of the popular social media apps include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat. Every platform has elements that makes it attractive to use. And when a company uses several in combination to deliver a multichannel message, consumers can see those messages on their favorite channels.

There are 5 pillars of social media marketing

When developing a marketing program, a key area that marketers care about is how to deliver their message. Social media helps in getting those messages to the right people at the right time, both free and paid. There are five pillars of social media marketing that will lead to a successful event.

Social Strategy – As with any marketing campaign or activity, an appropriate strategy must be formulated in advance. Organizations need to determine the goals of the program, the channels to be used, and the type of content that will be shared. here are a few examples

Set goals – The use of social media for marketing should be closely aligned with business and other marketing program goals. The website is driving traffic and leads, and increasing revenue.

Select Social Media Platforms – There are many social platforms available, but there is no point in using them all for businesses. Organizations need to know their audience and choose the platform that best suits their demographic.

Content mix – Each social platform has a unique taste for delivering content – including video, imagery, links and direct messages.

Planning and Publishing – After establishing a strategy, it’s time to start publishing. Tools like Hootsuite, Hub Spot and Sprout Social enable marketers to schedule their posts at the appropriate times.

Listening and Engagement – ​​Businesses that create activity on social platforms can see an increase in conversations and conversations about brands and products. Users will comment on and share posts, tag the company in their own posts, and even begin communicating via instant messaging functionalities. These types of interactions are ideal because the information is there to alert social media managers. Free tools like Google Alerts can also notify marketers when their company is being mentioned.

Analytics and Reporting – As more content is published and audiences expand, it is a good idea to measure performance continuously. The questions asked include the following:

Which positions are getting the most engagement?

Where are the followers of a brand? A marketing team can use this information to make more informed decisions about future campaigns and take advantage of the work it does.

Advertising – Most social media marketing is free – with the exception of resource time and specialized equipment. Building an audience and publishing material on free social media sites is a great way to achieve marketing goals, but as the program grows, so does the budget. Paid marketing characteristic can be very useful to organizations. They can target their ads at audiences based on many factors, including demographic information, retargeting and behaviors.

How to Build a Social Media Marketing Strategy?

Here are the steps a company needs to take in order to create an effective social media marketing strategy

Identify social media goals that align to the business goals – Begin by setting goals that will act as not only a guide for how to use social media. Use a SMART goal format to find out what is realistic to achieve. Example of goals include the following

Increase traffic to website

Drive more

Increasing revenue

Growing audience

Research and define the target audience – It’s important to know who the target market is, what they care about and why they require a company’s products or services. Social media platforms are rich with data regarding users, so this exercise can be done without a substantial market research project. Knowing demographic information and which follows the social channel are great starting points. It’s also vital to know that different platforms attract different users.

Evaluate Competitiveness – Knowing what the competition is doing enables marketing teams to identify what is good for the competition and what is not. It provides industry insights as well as opportunities to market the product or message. Social listening tools can help brands establish different monitoring streams for competitive content and industry keywords.

Create and curate content relevant to the channel – Knowing the goals, audience and competitive landscape will help determine what kind of content the brand needs to create. Engaging content comes in a variety of forms and media.

Be on time with posts and responses – Posting while it is convenient for a business is not always convenient for customers. Leveraging the best time to post for engagement is the information that can be gathered from analytics. Organizations can then schedule posts ahead of time using the publishing tools available. The timeliness of content is also important as the news cycle moves rapidly.

Get buy-in and support from other people in the organization – Marketing departments need to involve other departments and stakeholders within an organization.

Measure and Optimize – The final element of building a successful social media marketing program is measuring what works and what doesn’t. Organizations should monitor the following:

Posts receiving top engagement;

Followers who continue to buy; and

Ads giving the highest ROI.

Businesses Benefiting from Social Media Marketing

Here are the steps a company needs to take in order to create an effective social media marketing strategy.

Small Businesses & Startups – If you talk then social media marketing is a great tool for small businesses and startups. This is a way for new businesses to create some awareness of their offerings. Using social media to sell products and services to a new market can be a gateway into building a customer base.

Direct Selling Companies – These types of businesses are very entrepreneurial and grow through communities. And social media can help build communities, reaching friends, family, and beyond. These started out as Tupperware and Mary Kay parties at homes. But social media apps are paving the way for new waves of direct sales companies like Lularo and Thirty-One Gifts.

Real Estate – Real estate companies benefit from social media by promoting open houses and displaying images of properties for sale. Features like a Facebook Live and Instagram Stories show video footage of these properties in digestible formats for users to consume.

B2B Companies – B2B marketing teams are able to better identify who their target prospects are – and when done correctly – they can appear in the right person’s newsfeed. The data presented about users on social media platforms helps in ascertaining who the audience is. And by using social media advertising tools, businesses can get the right message in front of the decision maker at the right time.

The advantages and disadvantages of social media marketing

Social media marketing has integrated itself into every organization’s sales and marketing roadmap. It is an additional channel for delivering contacts and messaging to a much larger audience than the homegrown database of contacts.

Benefits of social media marketing

Reach a wide audience – There are over 3.6 billion users across all social media channels. A single post share can rapidly increase brand exposure.

Better Customer Satisfaction – Organizations not only do marketing to customers on social media , they also interact with them.

Cost Effective Tools – When executed correctly, the cost of managing a social media program can be low. Once the knowledge, team, and program strategy is in place, marketing teams find it easy to use with very little overhead.

Increase Website Traffic – Social posts are a great way to drive traffic back to a brand’s website. Blog content promotions, landing page offers and more can entice users to click through and engage with a brand further.

Gain Better Insights – Using the analytics and reporting features from each social media platform to gain insight into who are Page followers, what content they are interested in and how they like to associate with a brand.

Disadvantages of Social media marketing

Time-consuming process – a lot of time can be spent on social media campaigns to make sure they are effective

Qualified Resources Required – Social Media Marketing programs do not benefit entry-level employees. Instead, skilled and experienced social media marketers are the key.

Will have to wait to see ROI – SMM is a long term investment. Social media platforms deliver high ROI, but not in the form of immediate results.

Competitor’s market research – Posting on social media is a public forum and everyone can see the content, including the competition. There is no solution for this.

Brand reputation is weak – SMM can open a brand to public embarrassment and bad press. Negative reviews can be plentiful as customers take to social media to address frustrations.

Conclusion

More than 70% of Internet users in the world are active on social networks, who spend on average at least an hour a day on those social networks, we have to conclude that social networks have become a kind of reality in which people communicate, Negotiate, and obviously trust. We also need to be aware that over 60% of those users access social networks via mobile devices, with strong indicators that this percentage will only increase in future years.

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