What is Social Media Marketing?
What is Social Media Marketing?
Most people have a general understanding of what Social Media Marketing is. However, if you're not familiar with the term, then here's a short guide explaining what it is and why you should consider it for your business.
Broadly Speaking
If you're reading this, then it's likely that you're already somewhat familiar with social media. Maybe you've even heard of it, and you know what it is, but you don't exactly know why you should care about it for your business. To put it simply, social media is a form of marketing that combines marketing and social activities into one.
The key differentiator between traditional marketing and social media marketing is that the latter focuses more on creating awareness and engaging with prospective customers rather than just attracting them as an audience.
Why You Should Care About Social Media Marketing
The primary purpose of traditional marketing is to attract new customers to your business. To achieve this, you would typically try to establish your brand in the marketplace by attracting potential customers to it with offers and discounts.
For instance, if you sell clothing, you might try to attract customers to your brand with special offers for the winter or the festive season. Perhaps you try to persuade them to come back by offering them more discounts, or you increase your social media presence to increase the likelihood of your existing customers engaging with you.
In contrast, social media marketing is all about engaging with your audience and establishing trust. When companies fall into the trap of focusing on attracting potential customers rather than engaging with them, they typically end up with a lot of frustrated and uninformed customers who are difficult to nurture and retain.
The key to successful Social Media Marketing is to create content that value adds to the conversation. When you do this well, you establish trust and credibility with your audience. In turn, when they have trusted you, they are more likely to engage with your content and take an interest in what you have to offer. In this case, your marketing and social media strategies work together to establish you as a thought leader in your industry.
Creating Awareness
The best way to understand the importance of creating awareness is to think about how the search engines work. If you want to rank highly in search results, then you need to satisfy the search engines' desired criteria. That means you need to create content that will appeal to the search engines and engage with your potential customers.
To create awareness, you need to post regularly on social media. However, you don't simply post to attract potential customers, you post to create engagement and foster conversation. If you want to establish your business as a thought leader in your industry, then you need to be engaging with your followers by posting content that adds value. In addition to this, you should be sharing and engaging with content created by others in your industry. This helps establish you as a thought leader, and it also opens the door for potential partnerships and collaborations. The more you engage with your followers on social media, the more they will know about you and what you offer. In turn, this creates more interest in what you have to say.
Growing Your Audience
In any market, having a large audience is key to being successful. With social media, having a large audience simply means having many followers. To attract potential customers to your business on social media, you need to have a large audience. However, having a large audience on social media does not mean you will automatically become a success in the marketplace. To truly do well, you need to have an engaged audience. To have an engaged audience on social media, you need to post regularly and engage with your followers by responding to their comments and queries. Sometimes, this means replying to tweets and replies to blog posts. In addition to this, you should consider using tools like Twitter Analytics and Google Analytics to track the performance of your tweets and blog posts. This way, you can determine which kinds of content perform best and which ones could be improved upon. To have a successful Social Media Marketing campaign, you need to establish yourself as an expert in your industry and provide valuable information to your audience. In turn, this will inspire them to engage with your content, follow you, and spread the word about your business.
Developing Customer Loyalty
To be able to build a customer base and gain traction in your industry, you have to figure out a way to create customer loyalty. To do this, you need to provide your customers with value and gain their trust by being helpful and acting in good faith. The best way to do this is by creating unique content that is valuable and of good faith, and by establishing yourself as an expert in your industry. When customers find you to be a thought leader, they will begin to see you as a go-to person for advice and information regarding your industry. As a result, they are more likely to trust you and continue to do business with you because they know you will act in good faith.
Measuring Success
To determine the success of your Social Media Marketing campaign, you need to track the results of your efforts. To do this, you need to set up automated metrics and measures so you can track the results of your efforts over time. The best way to do this is by using tools like Google Analytics and Suomi. With these tools, you can track the results of your social media campaign in great detail, allowing you to see exactly how your efforts are performing, and you can set up various dashboards to analyze the data. In addition to this, you can use Google Analytics to track the performance of your website and social media channels, and you can use Suomi to measure the success of your social media campaign. With these tools, you can set up measures so you can track the results of your efforts over time. This way, you can determine the success of your Social Media Marketing campaign.
Why Social Media Marketing Is Important Today
In today's world, social media marketing is more important than ever before. With the rise of influencer marketing and content curation, brands need to invest in social media marketing if they want to stay relevant. But this comes with its challenges, especially since many businesses don't have the time to manage their social media accounts personally. That's where automated social media marketing comes in.
The Rise Of Influencer Marketing
Thanks to influencer marketing, brand awareness and engagement is at an all-time high. The influencer market is now worth over US$16 billion, and the industry is growing at a rate of 28% per year.
Traditional marketing techniques such as TV advertising and radio branding still have their place, but just about every brand and organization now uses social media to gain credibility with the target audience. That's largely thanks to influencer marketing. And it's not just about celebrity either; anyone with a large social media following can become an influencer and drive sales through content creation and distribution.
Influencers are often seen as celebrity peddlers who will do anything for brand exposure, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Thanks to the democratization of content creation and social media, any person or brand can now become an influencer, and it's opened up a whole new world of opportunity for content creators.
Content Curation: Leveraging Multiple Channels
Traditional media such as TV and radio broadcasts can be challenging to schedule, and it's difficult to measure the effectiveness of adverts that you pay for. Thanks to the work of content curators, which essentially combines the functions of a journalist and a marketer, this is no longer necessary. Content curators search for and discover content that is useful and interesting to the target audience, building an online community around these topics while sharing relevant and engaging material across different platforms
For example, Fast Company and Refinery29, two highly influential content curators, have an open strategy where they share content across different platforms and continually engage with their audience through sponsored posts, live chats, and more. This content is then typically shared by other media figures and news websites, increasing the reach of the content exponentially. The result is that brands can now have a constant stream of high-quality content without having to pay top dollar to traditional media companies.
Increased Personal Branding
Thanks to the rise of digital personal branding, brands can now construct a digital identity for themselves and use this to engage with customers. Essentially, a personal brand is simply your online reputation, and just like your physical brand, it's an extension of your business brand. The key difference is that your personal brand can be much more engaging and less stiff compared to a business brand.
The team at HubSpot, an ecosystem of productivity tools used by over 4 million businesses, recently found that 79% of marketers said that customer engagement is the biggest factor impacting their success, and 52% said the same about gaining brand loyalty. This is why personal branding is so important today, as it allows brands to be more engaging with their customers and potential customers, attracting a more relevant and interested audience. In turn, this can lead to greater engagement, greater value, and more brand loyalty.
The Rise Of Video (And Why It Matters)
Thanks to the rise of video, content sharing and social media in general, video is now a critical part of every content strategy. Over the past two years alone, video views have increased by 300% globally, and video consumers now spend twice as much time on social media platforms as they do on Netflix or Spotify.
If you want to be successful in today's world, you can't ignore video. Not only is video easier to consume than text-based content and far more engaging, but it also allows for greater creativity. More and more brands are using video to engage with their audience, and it's become a key component of a successful marketing strategy.
The Challenges Of Going 'Viral'
Thanks to social media and content curation, content can now "go viral" at the touch of a button. This is a major change from the era of TV when a new show would often struggle to gain traction before it was discovered by a lucky few and then gradually built up a small audience. Today, anyone with a YouTube channel can become a fully fledged content creator, able to reach potentially billions of users.
But this also comes with its challenges. While it's great to gain global reach and engage with many people, this also means that you will have to contend with a lot of competition. The more people that you engage with, the more people that you will have to compete with. This is why it's so important to focus on quality over quantity when creating content for online platforms. Simply put: if you want to go viral, don't share gossip or mindless videos. Create high-quality content that will allow your viewers to connect with you on a personal level, and you'll be able to engage with your audience and ultimately grow your business.
The Importance Of Measurement And Analysis
In any industry, measurement and analysis play a critical role. Without them, it's almost impossible to understand the results of your efforts and whether you're progressing in the right direction. Thanks to the digital age, this has become even more important. Thanks to tools such as Google Analytics and Hootsuite, businesses can now track the results of their marketing efforts and analyze the activity of their audience, determining which tactics are most effective and which ones need to be changed or adapted.
As Marketing Charts puts it, "to have solid marketing analytics you need to be measuring the right things at the right time across the right platforms." To get the most out of your analytics, you need to focus on connecting the dots, looking for the trends and patterns that can help you make informed decisions about your marketing strategy. With the right tools and a little bit of patience, you'll be able to determine the effectiveness of your various tactics and determine which ones work best for your business.
Being able to analyze and measure your marketing efforts is critical because it allows you to determine the impact that your efforts are having on your target audience. Thanks to the internet and the various online marketing tools, this now has the potential to be a lot more accurate than ever before. In an age where businesses can operate virtually across the world, the potential to measure the impact of your marketing is huge.
The Demographics Of The Millennial Generation
Millennials now account for almost 50% of the world's population, and many marketers and businesses know exactly what this generation wants and need. Not only do millennials spend more time on social media than any other generation, but they are also more likely to use new technologies and innovations to enhance their life. This can be seen from the rise of chatbots that help millennials make online purchases to the increased importance of VR for marketing and customer engagement.
The demographics of the millennial generation are diverse, with over 100 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 34, according to a recent study by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A's). Additionally, this generation is now approaching marketing and advertising from a different perspective, demanding better creative and more original content.
Whether you're a business or a marketer looking to engage with this audience, you need to understand what they want and need if you want to be successful in today's digital world.