Over the years, as technology has advanced, the internet has become a common communication tool among people across the globe because of which many individuals have a web-based life profile that they connect with most of the time. And when it comes to e-business, social media plays an important role. Talking about it you must have heard the concept of social media marketing and its importance in building a brand. In this article, we will talk about social media marketing and how it is important for your business.
What is SMM?
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a way of promoting your goods and services with the help of social media platforms and websites. It is one of the best ways to build your brand and increase traffic to your website.
Here are some different social media platforms and their unique points:
1. Facebook
Facebook is one of the most worldwide used social media networks. And when it comes to e-commerce, Facebook is at the leading position and allows individuals, businesses to interact with one another. Its unique points are as follows:-
- It can be accessed from any device having internet connectivity which allows businesses to work anywhere and anytime they want.
- It allows advertisers to target their audience by interests, job description, location, etc.
- Helps you to collect reviews about your brand and provide customer service.
2. Instagram
Instagram is yet another social networking website that allows you to share your photos, videos, and other media that you want. It is a great way of sharing any kind of visual content and hence can be valuable for building your brand identity. Its unique points are as follows:-
- It offers advertising options for organizations that can be accessed through Facebook.
- You can make use of Instagram hashtags that help you to go with the popular trends and to get the relevant highlights of the topic. This feature is a great way to build your social presence.
- If you are a B2C company then you can share the photos of the products and request your followers to do the same.
3. Linkedin
Linkedin is a business-related online service that can be operated through websites and other mobile apps. It’s a network for professionals, including employers and employees both. It’s a useful app for B2B expectations. Its unique points are as follows:-
- Helps in reaching out to potential employees.
- You can attain B2B prospects.
4. YouTube
YouTube is a platform that has a variety of user-generated content online. It allows you to upload, view, share videos of your own content, and subscribe to other users. Its unique points are as follows:-
- It helps you to host videos to embed on your site.
- You can post tutorials and demonstrations highlighting your company culture.
- You can become a creator and earn advertising revenues from Google Adsense.
Reasons and benefits of SMM?
Well, as mentioned above, SMM is important for any business to build its brand. Here are some reasons proving its benefits for businesses:
- Improves brand loyalty: If you want to connect with your audience, you should know how to take advantage of social media tools. The benefits of using social media platforms are that it provides you with a great number of followers on social media and lets you build good connections with your customers be that old, new or recent, and that influences them to be more loyal towards your brand.
- Superior customer satisfaction: Social media provides a platform where companies can easily communicate with their customers and help professionals to analyze what their potential customers are looking for. There are many analytics tools that can help you to know the preferences of your customers. Your brand should be devoted to customer satisfaction.
- Expands Brand Awareness: Brand visibility is one of the most important goals of any business as consumers are likely to buy brands they easily recognize. Social media marketing helps you to have that kind of brand recognition. Try making people interact with your content and it will increase your brand awareness.
- Enhances search engine rankings: Using social media marketing tools helps you to get more inbound traffic on your site. Social media drives traffic from social media pages to your company site and increases organic reach of your business and for this, you just have to post some quality content.
How local businesses can use SMM for marketing:
Local businesses also use social media platforms to promote their products and services. They use these platforms to develop their market research on new products and services, they try to encourage customers to give reviews and feedback on new product ideas. Such interaction with customers makes them feel that the company has engaged with them in the process of co-creation.
1. By posting high-quality content and showing your personality: You have to post good quality content about your business in order to attract customers because they always want to know the latest updates and that is the reason why they follow you on social media. Post pictures of people running your business also of your products.
2. Inspect what your competitors are up to: If you want to target your audience, then you’ll have to keep in mind what your competitors are planning and then accordingly find which social media site is going to be best for you. Surveying your customers will help you to find that site and know about the audience’s preferences.
3. Use social media as your marketing plan: Coming up with promos, offers and contests keeps users following your brand and is also a fun way of bonding with them. Post some kind of blogs, case studies, and promote your activities on these sites. You can use the following sites to do that- Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.
4. Use time and resources: Make the best use of time and resources that you have in your hand and it will pay you back with lots of benefits, it’s not necessary to find new customers every now and then, your regular customers will be very happy to know that you are on a social media platform and follow you. Just create awareness about your social media presence and locate your resources accordingly.
Steps to plan SMM strategy for your business:
Find out your target audience
It’s important to know who your customers are in order to make a presence on social media. If you know who you are dealing with you’ll be able to know about their preference and then be better able to design your social site messaging. Don’t analyze things on your own just get involved with the customers and know about them and it will help you a lot.
Set your goals
Now that you have decided who your customer is, the next step that you must take is to figure out what you want from a social media platform. It’s important to set some realistic goals and if you’re clear about what you want to achieve from a social media campaign you can apply your practices in the best way possible. There are generally two main goals that can be achieved using social media marketing-
- Brand Awareness
- Conversions
Establish your approach
Till now you’ve decided your goals and have a way to start things. Now it’s time to decide your approach and it should be data-driven. Your approach will show exactly how you’re going to portray yourself on social media platforms that’ll help you achieve your goals. You can follow these approaches-
- Reach out people
- Create quality content ford customers
- Engage with customers
Generate goodwill
Goodwill of the company plays an important role in making your social media marketing work. One of the easiest ways of generating goodwill is to create as much content as you can. But don’t forget to provide high quality and informative content because that’s the key to attract customers towards your brand. Another way of creating goodwill is to keep interacting with your customers who engage with your social profiles.
How To Build An Online Community To Generate Sales:
This task is one of the most important tasks in social media marketing. Let us discuss the ways by which you can build an online community to generate your sales:
- Define the purpose and goal: This is the very first step to build an online community, because if you do not have any goal and purpose for your community then why will people join your community. Firstly, make a clear goal for your community so that the people will understand which type of work they have to do in your community.
- Select perfect Platform For Your Community: This is the most important factor that which platform is the most suitable platform for your community. If you need only 20 to 25 members, then you can join with your community on the WhatsApp group. But if you want to make a massive community, then you can make your community on Facebook or Reddit.
- Develop Rules And Norms: It is very important that you have rules and norms for entry and have to agree to abide by them. If they do not agree with your terms and conditions, then tell them that they will be kicked out of your group.
- Identify Key Stakeholder For Your Community: It is very important that your community should be well trained. You have to make a community manager. The main task of the community manager is to handle all the accounts related to the community. You have to give the work to your members according to the talent of an individual.
Case Study:
In this section, we will talk about the case study of Dove and will know how they increase their sales with the help of branding.
The main goal of the Dove is to make ladies feel great about themselves. Dove selects the target market and creates content that tells a story that women can relate to.
After researching for several days, Dove found that 80% of women have negative chatter on social media. Now, Dove’s purpose was to change that trend and make social media a more positive experience for women. Dove teamed up with Twitter and built a tool to launch the #SpeakBeautiful Effect, which breaks down, which body-related words people use the most and when negative chatter appears during the day.
According to Dove, #speakbeautiful was used more than 1,68,000 times, which makes this campaign successful.
With the help of this case study, we have to learn how to link your audience to your brand values so that you can also create a successful campaign like dove’s campaign.
Summary:
Social Media Marketing(SMM) is a way of promoting your goods and services with the help of social media platforms and websites. It is one of the best ways to build your brand and increase traffic to your website.
There are many benefits of SMM (Social Media Marketing)
- Improves brand loyalty.
- Superior customer satisfaction.
- Expands Brand Awareness.
- Enhances search engine ranks.
It is important to know, How local businesses can use SMM for marketing:
- By posting high-quality content and showing your personality.
- Inspect what your competitors are up to.
- Use social media as your marketing plan.
- Use time and resources.
It is also important to know, Steps to formulate SMM strategy for your business:
- Find out your target audience.
- Set your goals.
- Establish your approach.
- Generate goodwill.
And the last important point you have to know is How to build an online community to generate sales:
- Define the purpose and goal.
- Select the perfect platform for your community.
- Develop rules and norms.
- Identify key stakeholders for your community.
And, In the last, we discussed the case study of the company that used SMM with the help of Seattle New Media to help with their branding.
I hope that with the help of this summary, you will get a brief idea about social media marketing if you want to know about the details of social media marketing then read this article thoroughly.
Conclusion:
In this article, we discussed social media marketing and its benefits. And we also talked about how local businesses can use SMM for marketing, and also know steps to formulate SMM strategy for your business, And then we discussed how to build an online community to generate sales and in addition, we saw a case study of a company that used SMM to increase the sales. What are you waiting for? Go and take the help of social media marketing to increase your business online.
