For some of us, the term Social Media Marketing sounds like we have been asked to uproot a giant tree from its stem with our bare hands. Grasping the whole idea of how social media marketing works has nothing to do with how tech-savvy one is or the number of grey hairs one has. The key is understanding how it works.
In this guide to social media marketing, you’d learn:
- What social media marketing is and its benefits ?
- How to develop a social media marketing strategy and execute it?
- How to create a social media marketing plan?
- Social media marketing tips.
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing is a form of e-marketing that capitalizes on the power of social media—the platforms on which users build social networks —to achieve a company’s marketing and branding goals, increase sales, and drive traffic. In addition, social media marketing requires a strategy and set goals. These goals include:
- Managing and optimizing your page.
- Building a healthy interaction with target audience by responding to comments, likes, etc.
- Connecting with brands or individuals with similar interests.
Social media marketing (SMM) also helps brands use purpose-built data analytics to track the success of their efforts and identify even more ways to engage and build the brand.
Benefits of social media marketing.
Digitalization is gradually becoming an integral part of the business world. In other to stay afloat in a highly competitive market, it is essential that SMM is a part of your business marketing strategy. Below are further reasons why Social Media Marketing should be imbedded in your business marketing strategy.
-
Increases Brand Awareness and creates brand recognition.
One of the major goals of marketing is to spread the word about your brand or business- gaining brand awareness. This is because consumers are more comfortable engaging with a brand or business with a certain level of recognition. Thus, strategically putting your business forward is an effective way of gaining brand awareness and recognition which leads to gaining your audience’s loyalty.
-
Bridges the gap between your brand and its audience.
Social media enables you to engage with your audience and make you an active participant in your brand. Your content and interactions with your audience bridges the gap and helps you familiarize and connect with your audience.
-
Drives traffic.
Inserting links in your profile, blog posts links in captions, and ads help drive traffic to your page and websites which converts visitors into consumers.
-
Drives sales.
Brands/businesses that effectively use SMM to generate brand awareness will experience an incline in sales. This because the chance that consumers would likely choose a brand; they follow over a competitor.
-
Cost effective.
Organic social media marketing is (mostly) free. It is free to create a profile and post contents. The quality of the content is able to promote the content organically but if you’d like to go an extra mile, you can opt for paid ads that helps your content reach a wider audience.
How to develop and execute a social media marketing strategy?
Social media marketing differs according to businesses and brand needs. The strategy that works for business A may not work for business, but below is some shared commonness.
-
Knowing your audience.
Knowledge of your audience online activities such as the platforms they use, when they go on them and why, what type of contents do they engage with, who else they follow and more.
-
Brand purpose.
What does your brand represent? What message do you convey to your audience? How do you want them to feel when they view your content?
-
Content strategy.
Having a structured content strategy is essential for having a consistent voice and delivering quality content regularly.
-
Analytics.
Quantifiable insights will inform your strategy, including who you’re reaching, the right content to share, the best time to post, and more.
-
Consistency.
Consistency help your business/brand remain at the top. You need to post regularly, stay on top of engagements with your business, engage back, keep up with trends, and maintain accurate profiles.
-
Inbound approach.
The aim of SMM is to pitch your business but do not make it all bout your business focus on adding value, sharing useful tips revolving around your industry. This in turn will organically promote your business and others will promote it for you.
How to create a social media marketing plan?
Your social media marketing plan is the roadmap to carrying out your strategy. It puts structure around your efforts so you can measure your success and make sure you’re spending your resources wisely. Here’s how to create your social media marketing plan.
-
Choose your platforms:
Choose a platform based on your target audience, platforms popular for your industry would reach your preferred audience in contrast to a random platform.
-
Set goals and objectives:
create a board of expectations and goals you hope to achieve such as, post once a day for a month or thrice a week, get your profiles set up, publish newsletters once a month.
-
Report and adjust regularly:
Use each platforms analytics to identify which posts has the most engagement, whether you’re getting more followers and to see your audience demographics. Use information gotten to figure out what works and nix what doesn’t.
Social media marketing tips.
Thinking of kick starting a social media campaign? Here are a few tips to help set the pace.
Be flexible with content types
while creating contents around your brand purpose, it is also important to offer valuable information that your ideal customer would find useful and engaging. This includes:
- Listicles- how-tos’, quick tips.
- Data and statistics.
- Polls, questions and suggestions.
- Local and trending news.
- Updates and announcements.
Make use of varieties of formats, images, infographics, videos, stories, etc.
Stay consistent.
Social media marketing helps to project your brand image across a variety of platforms, consistency helps your brand stay on top.
Engage with your audience.
Appearing once a month to schedule posts and disappear for a decade does not project your brands mage in a positive light. Your audience is your community, you need to pay attention to who’s engaging and engage back, interact with and respond to comments, go on live streams, create polls to spark discussions, etc.
Use content creation tools.
Each social media platform has different content creation tools. For Instagram, create reels, jump on trending sounds, accompany your posts with illustrative images. Use tools like CANVA to create visuals that look professional.
Measure success with analytics.
Keep track of success using the insights from your strategy. Google analytics is a great marketing tool that helps you measure the success of your SMM techniques as well as determining what works and nixing what doesn’t.
