Social media marketing is an important tool for companies these days, but it’s not a strategy. The real key to unlocking marketing success is knowing how to use social media as part of your overall online strategy. In this article you’ll learn about the basics of social media marketing, why it’s an important part of your digital marketing campaign, as well as how to get started with it today!
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing refers to the use of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and others, as channels for promoting products, services, or brands, and engaging with audiences to achieve marketing goals. It involves leveraging the power of social media to build brand awareness, drive website traffic, generate leads, increase sales, engage with customers, and build a community of loyal followers.
Social media marketing typically involves creating and sharing content, such as text, images, videos, and other media formats, on social media platforms to engage with users and encourage them to take desired actions. This can include posting regular updates, running advertising campaigns, engaging in social listening and responding to customer inquiries or feedback, and leveraging social media analytics to measure and optimize the effectiveness of marketing efforts.
Social media marketing can be an effective strategy for businesses of all sizes and industries to connect with their target audience, build relationships, and grow their brand presence in the digital world. It requires careful planning, content creation, audience targeting, and measurement to ensure that marketing efforts align with overall business objectives and deliver the desired results.
Top 5 Reasons Your Business Should do Social Media Marketing
Increase Brand Awareness: Social media platforms provide a vast audience reach, allowing businesses to create and promote their brand to a wide range of users. By consistently sharing engaging content and actively engaging with followers, businesses can raise brand awareness and establish their presence in the minds of their target audience.
Improve Audience Engagement: Social media marketing enables businesses to interact with their audience directly, fostering meaningful engagement and building relationships. By responding to comments, messages, and reviews, businesses can engage with their audience, gather feedback, and build customer loyalty, which can lead to increased customer retention and advocacy.
Enhanced Website Traffic and Lead Generation: Social media marketing can drive traffic to a business’s website, which can result in increased leads and potential customers. By sharing compelling content and including calls-to-action (CTAs), businesses can drive users to their website, landing pages, or online store, and encourage them to take desired actions, such as making a purchase, subscribing to a newsletter, or filling out a form. It should be a part of your SEO strategy as it can help boost your pages’ ranking as well.
Targeted Advertising Opportunities: Social media platforms offer powerful targeting options that allow businesses to reach their ideal audience based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. This enables businesses to tailor their marketing messages and promotions to specific segments of their target audience, increasing the chances of reaching the right people with the right content at the right time.
Cost-Effective Marketing: Social media marketing can be a cost-effective option compared to traditional forms of advertising. Many social media platforms offer various advertising options with flexible budgets, allowing businesses to allocate their marketing budget efficiently. Additionally, organic social media marketing, which involves sharing regular content without paid promotion, can be a cost-effective way to build a brand presence and engage with the audience. This design rush article will give you an idea of some of the social media advertising costs.
What are the Benefits of Hiring a Social Media Manager?
Expertise and Strategy: Social media managers are experienced professionals who understand the intricacies of social media platforms, algorithms, content creation, and audience engagement. They can develop a comprehensive social media strategy tailored to your business goals, target audience, and industry, helping you make the most out of your social media efforts.
Time and Resource Savings: Managing social media accounts can be time-consuming, requiring regular content creation, scheduling, monitoring, and engagement. Hiring a social media manager frees up your time and resources, allowing you to focus on other core aspects of your business while ensuring that your social media presence is consistently managed. That is why we offer Social Media Management Packages run by our Social Media Expert.
Content Creation and Curation: Social media managers can create engaging and relevant content for your social media accounts, including text, images, videos, and other media formats. They can curate and share relevant content from other sources, ensuring that your social media profiles are consistently updated with valuable content that resonates with your target audience.
Audience Engagement and Community Building: Social media managers can proactively engage with your audience, respond to comments and messages, and build a community of loyal followers. They can monitor social media conversations, gather feedback, and provide timely responses, helping you build relationships with your audience and enhance customer satisfaction.
Advertising and Analytics: Social media managers can create and manage paid advertising campaigns on social media platforms, leveraging their expertise in targeting, ad creation, and optimization to maximize your advertising budget. They can also track and analyze social media performance using analytics tools, providing insights and recommendations for continuous improvement and better results.
Crisis Management and Reputation Management: In case of any social media crisis or negative feedback, a social media manager can handle the situation professionally, respond promptly, and mitigate any potential damage to your brand reputation. They can develop strategies to manage and address negative comments or reviews, and maintain a positive brand image on social media.
Stay Updated with Social Media Trends and Best Practices: Social media is a dynamic and ever-evolving landscape, with trends, algorithms, and best practices constantly changing. A social media manager can stay updated with the latest social media trends, algorithm updates, and industry best practices, ensuring that your business remains relevant and competitive in the social media space.
Some important points to keep in mind
Social Media is a Tool Not a Strategy
Social media is a tool, not a strategy. It’s a great way to reach out to new customers and fans, but it’s not a replacement for traditional marketing or good old fashioned customer service.
Social media marketing can be used as part of your overall marketing strategy, but it’s important that you don’t get lost in the hype surrounding social media and forget about what really matters: serving customers with excellent products and services at an affordable price point–and doing so consistently over time!
Turn Prospects Into Customers
The difference between a prospect who clicks on your website and one who becomes a customer is equal parts content and social media marketing strategy.
The reality is that you can spend all the money in the world on a kickass website and still not get any results. You need to offer something compelling enough for people to share it with their friends, family, colleagues or followers on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
This means creating excellent quality content that provides value to your target audience (and hopefully beyond).
People Spend 90% of Their Time Online on Mobile Devices
In today’s world of social media marketing, people spend up to 90% of their time online on mobile devices. They are constantly on the go and increasingly impatient with slow load times. Mobile users are also more likely to use their phones to look for information about products and services than desktop users, which means that you have an opportunity to reach a larger audience than ever before!
You Need to Create Great Content
You need to create great content people want to share with others if you expect social media marketing efforts to be successful.
Your content strategy should include a mix of:
Engaging, relevant and shareable pieces that will help drive traffic back to your website or business.
Educational resources like blog posts (with calls-to-action) that teach your audience something new about what you do and how they can benefit from it.
Where Do We Go From Here
So you have built up a following and have fantastic content that engages people to click but where do they go when they click that link? If you don’t have a solid website to send these prospects to you could lose them a lot faster than it took to engage them. Make sure the sales funnel is in place to receive them and that starts with a well designed website. At Web by Craig we feel so strongly that your website design, SEO and social media marketing go hand in hand that we offer bundle discounts if you sign up for two or more of our services. Also make sure you are customizing your links to match the post. For example, if you are posting about a specific chew toy you sell instead of linking to your home page link to that chew toy’s product page on your site so they can take action and buy it right away.
Nothing Happens Overnight
While it is such a fantastic feeling when your post goes viral it often meant months of creating posting and engaging before that one hits the mark. There will be lots of testing as you find your voice and figure out what your target audience responds to.
Key Takeaways
Overall, social media marketing can offer numerous benefits to businesses, including increased brand awareness, improved audience engagement, enhanced website traffic and lead generation, targeted advertising opportunities, and cost-effective marketing, making it a compelling strategy for businesses looking to expand their online presence and achieve their marketing goals.
Hiring a social media manager can provide expertise, time and resource savings, content creation and curation, audience engagement and community building, advertising and analytics, crisis management and reputation management, and keeping your business updated with social media trends. Their skills and knowledge can help you effectively manage your social media presence, build your brand, engage with your audience, and achieve your marketing goals on social media platforms.
While Social Media shouldn't be ignored it is only one aspect of your overall marketing strategy and no substitute to providing great products and customer service.
