During the digital world that is present, social media marketing is a significant aspect of every successful digital marketing strategy and includes one or more of the largest social media channels today, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. With each of these platforms having billions of active users, it's easy to see why social media marketing is a great opportunity for businesses to build brand awareness and growth. Whether your business is a small start-up or a long-standing brand, social media marketing will provide you with the ability to reach your target customers fast and cost-effectively.
Social media marketing is simply the posting and sharing of content across one or more social media platforms to achieve your marketing and branding goals. The action can include posting an image, video or story, responding to followers, running paid advertisements, and reviewing results to revise strategies.
Unlike traditional marketing methods, social media marketing is not a one-way communication process. It allows for two-way communication so businesses communicate with their audience, customers and users. Social media can allow for businesses to form strong bonds and relationships with their audience, users and customers.
The biggest benefit of Social Media Marketing is the brand awareness it creates! When your brand is visible on different platforms, people recognize it, trust it, and depending on your audience, start to become familiar with the brand. Consistent, visually appealing and informative posts, explainer reels, and videos position your brand in front of an audience. Social media marketing also allows brands to show their audience brand personality and values and even behind the scenes 'business' that makes the business more relatable and personal.
Social media marketing is also effective at driving traffic to a business' website and generating leads. Social media posts/stories can be structured with links back to a blog post, landing page, or product, therefore bringing your audience to a website, and increasing the chances of sales conversions. Companies can also use paid advertising on social platforms such as Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads, targeting their audience along key demographics, interests, behaviours, locations, and other attributes, making sure their ads are seen by the right people at the right time. This targeted advertisement increases a business' ROI, and shortens the target-business goals.
Another key benefit of social media marketing is engaging with customers, and building relationships with your customers. Social media is a two-way communication tool that allows potential customers to interact directly with your brand, ask questions, share comments and feedback, and engage with your content by liking, commenting on, or sharing your posts. If you reply to your customers | prospects questions and messages quickly, you are sure to improve customer satisfaction as well as customer loyalty, and customers learn to trust you. When you run interactive polls, or quizzes, giveaways or contests, you have a couple of things happening: engagement and additional followers to your social media page!
Social media marketing can also be a means for market research and competitive research. What brands are your competitors? What are your competitors doing on social media? Social media is a set of tools that allow for observing trends, and user behaviour and can give you insights on how to make improvements to your own marketing. Social media analytics tools will provide information reach, impressions, engagement and growth, etc., post-to-post, as well as over time to help you see how successful your campaigns are, in addition to improve your data-driven marketing efforts, and generate better results.
The content is the continuity of how social media marketing works. It all hinges on good quality content that you create for your audience. The type of content you create will help you with both engagement and entice potential customers. This includes, but is not limited to, educational posts, inspirational stories, customer testimonials, product demos, “a day in the life” type videos, branded content, brand aligned trending Reels, and any visual content, e.g. infographics, or branded design, gets attention quickly. Video keeps users on your content longer, which increases the chances of a conversion.
Yet, social media marketing must have a plan. You can't just post to your social media... you need to make sure you have an a posting calendar, established goals, and a clear understanding of your target market. Each platform has its own nuances and even audience behaviours. Content will be different for each platform. For example, the focus of Instagram is on visuals and reels, whereas LinkedIn is more suited for professional and educational content and is probably not a great platform for companies looking to sell something to individuals (B2C). Facebook is more suited for community building and promotions.
In conclusion, I think the evidence is clear that social media marketing is a necessary part of digital marketing that can open up unlimited options for growing your company in the online space. Social media marketing builds brand awareness, increases website traffic, and generates leads by improving audience engagement (is there such a thing as too much?). Social media marketing allows you to understand your market and the competitors in that market, and provides a cost-effective form of marketing as compared with hashtag print media, outdoor media, and mainstream media.
As social media continues to evolve, companies that use social media marketing will continue to outperform their competitors, but only if they plan and execute their campaigns based on previously established benchmarks through their social media strategy and content calendar.
If you want to take advantage of social media marketing for your business and continue to build your business through social media, the team at Digital Marketing can help you by creating result-driven social media strategy and campaigns that are aligned with your
business goals. Contact us to help you to turn your social media to a powerful engine for business growth for your brand.
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