Social media marketing is one of the biggest components of digital marketing and is considered one of the successive methods to build a brand online, whether it's a human or a large or small business. There are at least 5.07 billion active users on social media, which makes it equal to 62.6 percent of the total population of the world, which holds a huge market cap. Being on social media is a great advantage for approaching your already existing customer base, which holds great potential to be converted into your future customer base. Social media is very helpful and effective when it comes to reaching out to your target audience, national or international, promoting your brand anywhere, creating a returning customer base, increasing your income, and growing your business. In this guide, we will be explaining what social media marketing (SMM) is, how to use it, how to plan, create, and implement the best strategies, and how to know what the success ratio of your organic campaign would be.
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What is Social Media Marketing (SMM)?
Social media marketing is a part of digital marketing that uses social media platforms to perform marketing strategies and promote your brand, whether national, international, or both.
Source: Safalta
You can approach your targeted audience with the high potential of converting them into your customers. But it is not just about some random posts of yours on your business accounts. However, social media marketing requires a strong strategy and a well-planned campaign for the engagement of the people. After the creation of your business profile, it requires maintenance, activity, optimization, and involvement in the competition. Then, you need to work on your content calendar, which will describe what you will post, what time you will post, and where you are going to post. Your posts are supposed to be a combination of images, text, videos, and stories that will help your customers understand your brand by providing more and more information in the form of text (the tagline), images (the product or service you are selling), and video (how it actually works and answering one of the major questions why to opt for you).Also, you need to post regularly; you have to answer all the comments, likes, and shares to maintain the reputation of your brand and build a community for it. It also depends upon your budget and the goals you set; sometimes social media marketing might also require paid ads. When you pay on social media, their algorithm shows your product or service at the top to the right people, which by default increases your market presence and sales.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing
Social media is a powerful marketing tool for your business because of its worldwide popularity, versatility, and huge market cap. You can also keep a track record of your performance, unlike traditional marketing methods where strategies like billboard advertising, ad printing in newspapers, and advertising your product or service on television and radio still face failures because of a lack of targeting the right audience.The following are the benefits of social media marketing:.
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Give a Human element to the business:
Social media platforms allow you to interact with your present customers and the people who have the potential to become your prospects in the future. As long as you are using it correctly, you will be able to form a deep connection with your audience.
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Drive Traffic
Adding links to your website in your social media posts can generate a significant amount of relevant traffic. This kind of traffic is very helpful for your search engine optimization results in converting your visitors to customers.
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Lead Generation
Lead generation features include appointment booking, Call-to-action, Facebook and Instagram shops, and Direct messaging. Using these features on social media, you can generate leads and conversions to increase revenue.
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Increasing Brand Awareness
If you are just a beginner, a startup owner, or a small-scale business owner, Social media allows you to show your brand to the rightful customers. You can use this opportunity to be known in the market as well as give you a chance to show your unique selling point (USP) to the customer and how you are different from your competitors.
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Building Relationships
It is a very important thing to form a relationship with your customer if you want to retain your customer base for the long term, since everything runs on trust in the world of business. Since social media helps you communicate with your followers, we can say it also acts like a powerful relationship-building platform.
Top 6 Social Media Marketing Platforms
There are numerous social media platforms you might want to take a look at and take advantage of to create a social media strategy to connect and generate revenue. But there is a catch, some platforms are better than all the others, meaning they can give you a larger customer base, more opportunity, more features, and more revenue. Here are the top 6 platforms you should take a look at to leverage the power of social media.
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Facebook
One of the most popular social media platforms and a huge marketplace, a huge advantage for any business. You can boost your brand, gain followers, generate leads, and increase sales. It also has a feature to display highly customizable, targeted ads. But there is a catch, Facebook is a very effective platform but comes with a lot of competition.
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Instagram
In the beginning, Instagram was a basic platform famous for sharing images. But over time, things keep getting better and brands can engage with their audience by posting attractive videos and photos. Instagram also contains the feature of stories, reels, shops, and live streams that are helpful for taking marketing to another level.
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X
Famous for its previous name Twitter, now known as X, is a platform that has a concept of short posts known as "tweets" and can be attached with images, animated GIFs, videos, and links. Basically, these days X is being used by companies as a customer service platform to assist their customers and file complaints. Yet you can use X to connect with your audience through short and impactful posts, build brand awareness, and look for topics and information that are related to your industry. A tweet can contain no more than 280 characters.
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YouTube
YouTube is a social media platform, the second-largest Search Engine after Google, famous for video-related content and a streaming platform known to mankind. If your business is capable enough to provide information in the form of video content, You must consider YouTube. With the help of YouTube, you can not just educate your customers about your product or services but also answer the most complicated questions in the easiest way possible.
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Pinterest
Pinterest is known as a "visual discovery engine" that attracts users for new ideas and creativity. Users of Pinterest mostly search for dream-chasing products and services like renovating their homes, dream vacation packages, wedding plans and living a luxurious lifestyle. If your brand offers anything that people dream of having, Pinterest is the right platform for your business.
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LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social media platform that is based on business networking and connecting with professionals. It is useful for a Business-to-business (B2B) supplier. It is directed towards professionalism and gives you a chance to share your expertise. You can also use LinkedIn as a job portal and promote job openings in your company.
Components for a good social media marketing strategy
To increase your chances of success and succeed in your organic campaign, you need a strong social media strategy to stand against your competitors. It is a simple process of deciding your goals, planning, creating tactics, targeting your audience, and tracking your performance. Here are the components of an effective social media strategy:.
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Audience Research :
Before posting anything, you must have a strong understanding of your targeted audience. You must know their taste, the platforms they use, the type of content they are in, and who they follow.
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Brand Identity:
You should have a blueprint in mind for how you want to position your brand when you post anything and interact with your followers.
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Content Strategy:
It is the kind of strategy where content describes the growth of your brand and the number of audiences attracted. The more specific and clear the information in the content, the more likely it will succeed.
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Analytics :
The process of collecting and analysing data for measuring performance and finding a way to improve it. Without analytics, you won't even have any information about what you are doing.
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Ongoing activity :
Ongoing activity is important because social media marketing is not a one-time deal.
You need to be active, keep posting, engage with your followers, and optimise your profile regularly.
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