There are over 3 billion social media users worldwide, and over 70% of successful marketers are convinced that social media have, in one way or the other, contributed to their businesses’ exponential growth. Perhaps this is what makes social media a preferred marketing medium for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and corporate businesses as well.
However, one primary concern is if it’s worth investing in social media marketing for your business. Should it top your list of marketing strategies for the New Year?
Well, to some extent, your decision here will be influenced by the audience you’re targeting, but then marketing on social media is certainly something you shouldn’t ignore. To help you get started with marketing on social media, we’ll touch on:
- Social media marketing definition.
- The benefits of social media marketing.
- How to do social media marketing the right way.
Let’s dive in.
What’s the Meaning of Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing (SMM) is utilizing social media websites and platforms to promote your brand. These platforms include Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest, etc.
Usually, the primary goal of utilizing these mediums is to create captivating content and infographics that users on these platforms can share on their social networks. You can post videos, texts, images and updates, etc. to drive engagement on the site and keep it active.
This will be crucial in helping you boost brand exposure and, most importantly, increase conversions. Now, getting started with social media marketing for your business is easy, but if you wish to build a solid brand reputation, the security of your audience comes first.
There are lots of ways you can ensure your audience’s security, for example, advising them not to share their confidential data, such as login details, with strangers. Still, you must also do your part to help them preserve these data. One of the foolproof ways of doing this is ensuring that your business website is fully encrypted with SSL certificates.
An SSL certificate, in this case, will ensure all the data shared on the site are fully encrypted and kept out of reach of cybercriminals who might be trying to steal confidential data like credit card details that are shared on your website.
What Are the Benefits of SMM?
Let’s take a step back in time to two decades ago when there was no social media. Interaction with people over long distances was a nightmare–same for a business struggling to build a client base.
Before the 1900s, you could only use letters to pass messages across long distances. It was almost impossible for startups to build a following.
Fast forward to the late 1900s, when social media was introduced; businesses have leveraged different forms of communications, including emails, to connect to prospects. While email marketing isn’t dead yet, social media have revolutionized the entire marketing industry.
Here are just a few benefits of SMM:
Boost in Website Traffic
Website traffic is the holy grail of any successful online business–and it doesn’t matter much whether it’s organic or paid traffic, so long as there’s conversion. With a proper ad targeting technique, social media will give you the dream client base of people that are solely interested in your products.
Besides, it also boosts your overall search engine rankings. If you share captivating content that is shared by most people, you get more inbound traffic, something which is bound to improve your SEO rankings because the search engines will see your brand as a reputable one.
Increased Brand Awareness
The brand awareness aspect here still touches on the type of content you share online. This means that if you want to attract a large following, it’s always crucial that you focus on the content you share online, ensuring that it is one that resonates with your target audience.
People will always share content that offers solutions to their everyday problems. They will also share content that is appealing to their eyes, and if you can produce such kind of content, you’ll surely get the word out about your business in several social circles.
Social Media Marketing is Cheap
Think of TV ads and billboards, etc….While it may be a bit costly and a little difficult targeting a specific audience with TV ads or billboards, social media marketing is way more direct and cost-effective.
For example, if you wish to use a medium such as Facebook, you’ll be able to choose the audience you want to reach. Besides, the costs are affordable, and you can easily reach a wider audience with a smaller ad budget.
Increased Conversion
Most brands prefer the use of how-to videos, guides and real customer testimonials on these social media platforms to promote their brands. This way, the businesses do humanize not only their brands, but also offers a smart way of solving problems.
This strategy increases conversion because it gives the target customers a desire to use a specific company’s products or services.
It’s Flexible
You are not restricted to connect with your audience to a time. With social media marketing, you can always tweak your schedules to get the most time with your target audience.
Besides, there are lots of free and paid SMM tools you can use to schedule posts, so they go live when your audience is most likely to interact with them.
How to Do SMM the Right Way
Just like any other technique, SMM also has its fair share of challenges. Before getting conversions, improved brand awareness and web traffic are things that will be hard to come by for you and you need to mull over below three pillars for running a successful SMM campaign.
Set Your SMM Goals
Setting your goals will make it easy focusing on your strategies. Your goals should be tailored on a mission to post content on your site not just for promotional purposes, but to drive awareness about the business.
Most importantly, you should focus on connecting with prospects and building a relationship with them. If you don’t know where to start, check your peers and feel free to copy and try something that works from them.
Choose a Target Social Audience
SMM was designed to be used as a targeted marketing strategy. This is not the time to try the old spray and pray techniques.
Identify your audience and post content that resonates with them. You can use social media tools to help you understand your audience’s behavior and trends, so you’re always up to date with current events.
Plan Your Posts
It’s not all about scattering content at any time on social media. Veteran marketers believe that planning your posts will help you come up with insightful content that will offer a solution to the audience and spur up engagement.
You can also schedule your posts and only post them at times when your prospects are active on social media. It’s also recommendable that you check analytics to understand your audience’s behavior and come up with something that will put you on the same page with them right away.
Bottom Line
Building a following and increasing conversion with social media shouldn’t be a tough job. If your strategies aren’t delivering 100%, consider tracking your competitors and use A/B tests to find out the plan which works best for you.
