What Is Social Media Marketing?

Some primary questions to ask in order to understand Social media marketing are:

1. What is social media marketing?
2. Why social media marketing?
3. How to do it?
4. Where to do it?
5. When to do it?

We are here to answer all of the above questions for you.

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is the use of social media websites and social networks to market a company’s products and services. Social media marketing a type of digital marketing. One of the main purposes of employing social media in marketing is as a communication tool that makes the companies accessible to those interested in their product and makes them visible to those who have no knowledge of their products. Social media is an easy to use cost effective medium for marketing. It is mostly used by small businesses. 

Why does social media marketing work?

1. Audience

Over the period of time the audience has shifted to social media. People spend on an average 2-3 hours on social media platforms daily. So, it is easier to reach audience on these platforms.

2. Brand recognition

As there is more audience on social media, the exposure of the content is more. Hence, increasing the brand recognition.

3. Target Audience on the basis of social media

Different social media platforms have different crowd. This crowd is divided on the basis of age, gender, location, profession and interests. 

For example:

• Instagram- Instagram caters to young audience who are more interested in sharing memes, content and photos. It is an excellent platform for promoting movies, TV shows, Fashion brands etc.
• LinkedIn- LinkedIn is a platform for business professional where technical companies can benefit a lot through advertisement

4. Cost effectiveness

Some brands, companies are startups or small scale companies. These require cost effective and budget bound marketing methods in order to create a brand face. For these purposes social media marketing is the perfect marketing option for them.

For any type of marketing, it is really important to make a strategy. A good marketing strategy helps us define our vision, missions and business goals.

Some Social media platforms used for social media marketing.

1. Linked in
2. Facebook
3. Instagram
4. Twitter
5. YouTube
6. Pinterest 
7. Snapchat

Things to keep in mind while creating a marketing strategy

1. Set your goals and missions –

Understand the requirements and set up goals that you aim to achieve from social media marketing. 

2. Determine your KPIs –

Note down all the key performance indicators that could benefit your company and can be obtained from content marketing. There are 7 important metrics or KPIs that must be considered in order to make content marketing a success.

• Clicks

Clicks are one of the simplest forms of engagement to measure. Anyone willing to click on a link to your website or blog is generally more likely to convert. This means you’re starting to cultivate qualified leads, instead of basic traffic.

• Likes

The more likes a post has, the higher engagement it will cultivate. We can also say that the content has authority and deserves more attention from the marketing team.

• Shares and retweets

While likes are one of the many social media key performance indicators, shares are very important too. If you want to look at true engagement, then make sure you track shares and retweets. These two indicate the audience is willing to associate with the brand and find the content share worthy.

• Comments 

Comments on social media say a lot about your content and effectiveness of your advertising campaign. If your content is relevant, interesting and informative, it will spark a conversation with your followers. More so, it could help generate loyalty among your followers.

• Brand Mentions

Brand mentions are the clear indicators of people talking about your brand with each other. It shows the organic growth of the influence of the brand.

• Profile visits

Now-a-days brands use social media websites as search engines for brand research. There are plenty of people that follow a page, but they may never visit your profile. So, how do we determine if people are aware of your content and are engaging with it? The people that are just starting to scope out your business will definitely visit your profile. This KPI isn’t as important as the others, as we can’t really measure intent to buy, but profile visits do indicate interest in your brand beyond your latest post.

• Active followers

Active followers are the followers who regularly interact with your content or profile. It can be in the form of profile visits, likes, comments, post sharing or link sharing. These followers are actually the loyal audience of the brand.

3. Decide Content – 

On the basis of audience and product, decide what type of content do you want to create. E.g.: For a fashion brand endorsement social media influencers are selected and hired to promote the product.

4. Identify Resources –  

Consider all the resources that one has like social media accounts, content creators and marketers. One must also take care of financial as well as time resources.

5. Create Content – 

Create audience specific and trendy content. While creating content one must take care of the standard rules and regulations as well as user guidelines in accordance with the platform on which it will be distributed.

6. Distribute and market –

For marketing and distribution one must have a properly trained team of individuals who have experience in the field.