What Is Social Media Marketing?
What Is Social Media Marketing?
With 48 million active social media users in the UK alone, social media is undeniably a huge part of our lives.
Despite many people trying to stay clear of social media platforms, it’s becoming increasingly hard to. Especially with friends and family using social media as the main way to connect with eachother.
Before we look at social media marketing, let’s define what social media is: Social media is a computer-based technology that allows people to connect over chats, images and videos.
It allows us to create virtual communities, entertain ourselves and establish relationships.
Social Media Marketing is a marketing strategy that uses social media platforms to reach online audiences and generate conversions.
Brands all over the world use platforms like Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn to share content that promotes their business.
For most businesses, social media is vital. A strong social media presence can help businesses reach their target audience, push traffic to their website and generate sales.
WHY IS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING SO EFFECTIVE?
Social media marketing has proven to be extremely effective for all types of businesses. So why is it so effective?
There are two main reasons:
- The sheer amount of people that use social media every day.
- It’s cost-effective.
This year, around 53.6% of the global population use social media. Spending an average of 2 hours 25 a day consuming content.
These stats show just how many people use social media and how easy it can be to tap into the wider audience and promote your brand/business.
Social media is cost-effective. Other than your time, it doesn’t cost anything to create and share content on platforms such as Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.
These platforms also offer paid advertisement (such as Facebook ads) opportunities to reach wider audiences. As you choose your own budget, paid advertisements on social media are suitable for businesses of any size.
Another brilliant reason to use social media for your business is to build your online community. Social media allows for a more laid-back approach when it comes to advertising your services/products.
You’re able to grow & build authentic connections with your audience and instantly share core messages anywhere, anytime.
You can convey your brand message and culture easier than you could through a professional website. People like to feel connected to a brand, showing behind the scenes photos and videos of the team is a great way to achieve this.
NOW FOR YOUR OWN MARKETING PLAN!
Here are 6 steps to create a successful marketing plan:
1.) Set goals:
What do you want your social media marketing efforts to achieve for your brand/business? Do you want more followers? Or would you like more web traffic and conversions on your website?
One of the main things in any successful social media marketing strategy is setting clear goals with a plan on how to achieve them. Once you know your goals, you can choose which platforms you’ll use and what content you want to share.
2.) Check competitors:
Sounds a little odd but this can help find out what they might be doing well and maybe not so well with their social media platforms. Learn from their strengths and weaknesses.
3.) Understand your target audience:
What do your customers want to see? And what content do they find enagaging? Your goal is to please your customers and sell your product/services.
This will allow you to create content that’s specific to them, making your ads/content more effective.
Creating a customer persona can help with identifying your audience. Look at psychographics and demographics answering questions such as: Who are they? What’s their main goal? Why do they need your product/service?
4.) Know your platforms:
Knowing how a platform works will help with understanding what type of content works well on that particular platform. For example, Instagram is typically suited for more polished photos and videos whereas TikTok focuses on more amateur style content.
5.) Create some content:
Work out what your corse message will be. What benefits do you want to highlight? Use a range of content such as video, photography, infographics, blogs etc. Make sure you keep all of that content in line with your brand image.
The content you share will depend on what your business does/sells. Think about ways you can use social media to show why your audience should use your business over your competitor.
You can use content calendars to help organise your schedule. These allow you to plan content in advance and also automatically post the content for you.
6.) Use analytics:
Most platforms provide their own analytical tools for you to monitor the effectiveness of your content. This helps you discover how many people it’s reaching, how many likes and shares it generated and much more
Monitoring analytics is so valuable as you can adapt your marketing efforts according to what types of content are performing well.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Social media marketing may seem slightly daunting to begin with, but it’s all about giving it a go. Social media is a long term investment, you may not see results straight away but stick with it and your hard work will pay off.
For more information on content and social media marketing, check out our other blog posts.