Social Media Marketing – An Introduction
Ever since the internet and the initial social media platforms, social media has taken over our lives, one quiet chunk at a time. Today, social media dominates our lives – most of us turn to social media even during the smallest of breaks we get.
|
Be it entertainment or news and information, and social media meets our needs today. In recent years, with the rise of e-commerce, the concept of social media marketing has become popular.
Social media marketing is the process of promoting products and services using different social media platforms today. Some of the major social media platforms include Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Why is having a solid social media marketing strategy crucial to a business today? They come bearing a galore of benefits, including:
– Brand recognition
– Easy access to a broader range of audience
– A strong online community
– Higher conversion rates
– Easy retargeting
– Faster growth and sales
– Increases brand loyalty and awareness
– Wider online presence
– Ready-made data to analyse performance; and more
Every social media marketer must be aware of the platforms and the content that works on them. The same type of content will not work out and become a hit across all platforms. For example, video content works better on Instagram than it does on Twitter. So, as a social media marketer, you must work around your social media marketing strategy and make sure you tweak your approach to suit the demands of the different social media platforms.
Having discussed the benefits of having a solid social media marketing strategy, become an expert social media marketer. Learn digital marketing from the comfort of your home with us at Digital Scholar.
In this article, we will discuss social media marketing strategy and social media marketing tips that will help you supercharge your social media marketing strategy.
Twelve smart tips to supercharge your social media marketing strategy:-
| Did you know?
According to Oberlo, 71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend it to their friends and family. |
Digital marketing is one of the most significant verticals of marketing today – it has streamlined the entire marketing process with the help of the many digital platforms and marketing tools available. Digital marketing is an umbrella term, and social media shares a significant chunk of the significance digital marketing holds in marketing.
Businesses and brands today are turning to social media marketing to promote their products and services. The wide range of targeting options and avenues to promote and run ads in different formats within these platforms has increased the demand for social media marketing services.
As a social media marketing manager, you should watch out for trends and platforms and constantly update your social media marketing strategy to stay on top of your game.
If you want to learn digital marketing, now is the right time. Digital marketing courses help you equip yourself with the right skills needed to be a successful social media marketing professional and more.
Read on for tips to supercharge your social media marketing strategy that will help you enhance your brand’s presence on social platforms.
1. Chalk out a clear objective
A goal-less plan will get you nowhere. If you build a social media strategy for the brands you handle, you need to define your campaign objectives. Doing this provides you with the direction in executing the action plan and paves the way to achieve our end goal. The first step in building your social media marketing strategy for business is to define your campaign objectives.
Having concrete goals will help you develop and build on your social media marketing strategy effectively.
2. Research, research, and research!
This step is an inevitable one when you are building your social media marketing strategy. Be familiar with what your competitors are up to on social media platforms and also do an in-depth analysis of your audience, their demographics, tastes and preferences, and more. Because, ultimately, they are your end game and the content you are creating is to cater to them.
Knowing your competitors and audience well will help you build an effective social media marketing strategy for business.
3. Every social media platform is different – Treat them like it
While formulating your social media marketing strategy, it is essential to understand and treat each social media platform as a separate entity. Every platform is different and caters to different sets of audiences and have their own unique purpose. For example, while Instagram is more of a visual platform, with the audience looking for quirky content, LinkedIn is a social media platform that mainly caters to (job-seeking) professionals. There is a very apparent difference between both platforms with respect to their purpose and audience.
So when you plan your social media marketing strategy, make sure you understand every platform’s individuality and plan your strategy accordingly.
4. Plan contests to increase engagement
No social media marketing strategy is complete without a contest or a giveaway. Contests are a great way to get your audience to engage with your brand, and they not only increase engagement with your current audience but also have the scope to attract a new set of audiences to your page. Plan and implement interesting contests with attractive giveaways and gifts as part of your social media strategy for business. This will amp up your social media presence.
5. Focus on creating diverse content
Your social media marketing strategy should consist of a diverse content bucket and caters specifically to different platforms. As discussed before, every platform is unique, and repurposing the same content across various social media sites will not always work. It is also unnecessary to be present on all social media channels available – you have to understand the purpose of every channel and choose the ones that will suit your brand and niche the best.
| Did you know?
According to Sprout Social, 57% of consumers will follow a brand to learn about new products or services, while 47% will follow to stay up to date on company news. |
As a social media manager, you must ensure that you go platform-wise while planning your content and have a diverse yet relevant content bucket. This will make your social media marketing strategy 10x effective.
6. Ensure you write the content of the highest quality
Content marketing is an integral part of social media marketing strategy. Your content is only as rich as your writing is. So make sure you write content that sells your business’ products and services cleverly.
A few social media marketing tips for writing:
– Define the difference between copywriting and content writing
– Ensure your content is grammatically precise and error-free. This decides the quality of your content.
– Address your audience directly. This will help you establish a strong connection with them.
– Keep your content conversational and precise.
– Go creative wherever you can. Quirky content always wins!
7. Do not oversell on social media
People do not like being sold to. Make sure you restrict salesy content to a minimum in your social media marketing strategy. Hard-selling does not always work, especially on social media, where people fall for quirky content. Make sure your brand expresses itself in the appropriate social media language and style.
This does not mean you should not have selling posts at all. You can include one or two sales-based content in your social media marketing strategy for business.
Your aim should be to build trust and not sell. People will automatically buy from you if they trust your brand and have an established relationship with it.
8. Engage with your audience
It is essential to stay in constant touch with your audience on social media platforms. This helps your page stay active and gain followers over time and enables you to establish a strong bond with your audience/followers.
Nobody hates a brand that is prompt and witty in its responses! Have audience engagement as the top priority in your social media marketing strategy.
As a social media manager, you need to ensure comments and tweets are replied to and retweeted.
| According to Sprout Social, about 75% of people made purchase decisions because of social media. This was back in 2016, and now the percentage of social-media-induced purchase decisions will be much higher. |
Thus engage with our audience as much as possible, be prompt in responding to comments and messages. Taking this up seriously as part of your social media marketing strategy for the business will take your brand places in terms of followers and traction.
9. Make sure your visual content is of high quality
The eye never misses out on visually pleasing content. Most social media platforms today support visual content of different formats. Ensure you spend enough time and budget in creating visual content that grabs the attention of your audience. This should be an integral part of your social media marketing strategy for business.
Take the time and effort to visualise your content best and make sure you hire the best of designers and videographers to shoot and design your content. Visual elements make up for half the success of your social media presence and feed. See to it that it is one of the top priorities in your social media marketing strategy.
10. Leverage the benefits of a Facebook group
Having a Facebook account is inevitable as you will need it to run advertisements. But Facebook offers much more than just being a platform for posting brand-based creatives and running digital advertisements. Facebook as a platform is undergoing a lot of major changes in terms of messaging and automation. A large chunk of users are active Messenger users – so, with the automation opportunities the platform offers, now is the right time to form a group on Facebook.
Facebook group is a must-have on your social media marketing strategy for business. They help you build and grow a strong community, increase traffic on your website by directing them to your site, and build a vast e-mail database.
11. Promote the content you share
Today, social media platforms come with an algorithm that makes it easy for your content to be missed by your followers. This is where promotion comes in – it is the process of creating an ad purely to enhance social media engagement for your posts.
Promotion is an essential part of any social media marketing strategy. With organic reach already reaching a dead-end, promoting your posts is the only way to go about getting your content to your target audience.
There are different ways in which you can promote your content on social media:
– The traditional way of promoting on social media – running ads
– Collaborating with influencers to promote your products and services
– Cross-promoting content across social media platforms
– Leverage e-mail marketing and direct your subscribers to your social channels
– Take up social media SEO – use hashtags and keywords on social channels for more organic visibility; and more.
Promotion is vital to your business and must be a part of your social media marketing strategy.
12. Identify and make use of the right tools
Your social media marketing strategy must involve tools to make it easier for you to manage your brand’s social media activities. From scheduling to automated replies, it has become a cakewalk for social media managers to manage brands’ activities with the help of tools. Finding and making use of the right tools will help you execute your social media marketing strategy seamlessly.
In addition to helping you manage your brand’s social media presence, tools also provide you with the data you need to analyse your brand’s performance across platforms. With this data, you can make the necessary tweaks to your social media marketing strategy to further enhance your brand’s performance and reach.
Therefore, tools must make it to your social media marketing strategy for business.
Key Takeaways:
- Social media marketing is an ocean of endless possibilities, offering brands and businesses abundant opportunities to establish themselves, sell, and grow.
- Organic reach is not entirely reliable. Therefore, as a social media manager, you must not ignore the importance of taking up promotional activities.
- Audience engagement is of prime importance – and being salesy with them always will not help. Prompt and consistent responses to queries, with a dash of wit wherever possible, will help build a strong community on social media.
- Never go easy with the quality of content. Your brand’s success on social media depends on the content’s quality. Nobody likes to read mediocre content.
- Focus on branding rather than just selling on social media. Once your brand is established, sales will automatically happen. Overselling on social media never works.
These are the 12 smartest tips to supercharge your social media marketing strategy for business. As a social media marketing manager, you will be able to see a sea change in the performance and reach of your brands on social media upon implementing the social media marketing tips discussed in this article.
Comment below if these tips were helpful for you in your social media marketing strategy.
