All inclusive Guide to Social Media Marketing – Smooth Sailing

“Social Media is changing the world; and we are all here witnessing it.”

Ian Somerhalder

We are living in a time where we are blessed to use social media as a tool. But, one must keep in mind that social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology.

Thus, social media is about the people, and not about the business. Provide for the people and people will provide for you.

It is to take into consideration that social media marketing is more than just posting on Facebook. You have to beat competitors, social media noise,and even compete with influencers, celebrities and other big names.

Therefore, you need a dazzling social media marketing strategy.

Social Media Marketing – SMM

The term ‘Social media marketing’ (SMM) refers to the practice of marketing a company’s products and services by using social media and social networks. 

SMM provides companies with a way to engage with existing customers and reach new ones while allowing them to promote their desired culture, mission, or tone. Social media marketing has purpose-built data analytics tools that allow marketers to track the success of their efforts.

How SMM works

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram  and other social media sites have the potential to change customer behavior. Thus, when these took off, businesses also took notice. 

By utilizing social media platforms, marketers can use a wide range of methods and strategies to promote content and encourage engagement. 

There are five underpinnings of Social Media Marketing

1. Strategy

Strategy includes determining your aims and goals, best suitable social media channels that could be used, type of content to be shared and target audience. 

2. Planning and Publishing

The marketers must plan the content to be published. Planning includes the theme and basic idea of the content to be shared, type of content (i.e text, audio, or video content), and decide when to publish it. 

3. Listening and Engagement

A good marketer, whether he is a sales person, a traditional marketer or a modern marketer, must always be willingly receptive towards feedback and criticism. 

Hence, a digital marketer especially, must monitor what users, customers and others are saying about posts, brands and all other business assets. 

This may require a social media engagement tool.

4. Analytics and Reporting

A big part of social media is knowing how far posts are going, so engagement and reach reports are very important. Without analytical reports you can not…

• Understand user behavior, as well as consumer behavior
• Refine your strategy
• Find best suitable platform for your brand
• Analyze your competitors.

5. Advertising

Purchasing social media ads is a great way to promote and boost your posts and reach potential users and customers.

The three main types of social media advertisement are:

1. Organic – Content that gets views naturally and one does not pay for them.
2. Paid – Ads that an organization pays for, i.e sponsors it.
3. Earned – Content that has been freely shared, liked, and commented on.

Types of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is not restricted only to platforms of Facebooks, Instagram or Twitter. The SMM industry now includes a wide range of mediums and types.

Some of the types of Social Media Marketing are as follows:

1. Content Marketing
2. Advertising/ Sponsorship
3. Influencer Marketing
4. Social Media Management
5. Paid Media
6. Building your followers
7. Contributing to forums
8. Reviews

If you are really serious about your brand, do not only consider large sites with a vast audience. Focus on smaller platforms too. Look for different, more creative and innovative ideas to capture the audience.

“Social media allows big companies to act small again”

Jay Baer

Techniques for Social Media Marketing

Social media is not just an activity, but an investment of valuable time and resources. Consequently, social media today requires a special set of skills whereby brands must fully understand their users.

Here are 6 fundamental social media marketing strategy techniques:

1. Start using chatbots

I’m sure you’ve heard, but chatbots are the future. This is not surprising since they are the only digital tool that enables you to communicate with your customers and resolve issues without human intervention. Additionally, chatbots integrate with the platforms with which consumers are most comfortable interacting: social media. A chatbot powered by AI can be easily integrated into your social media strategy using platforms such as Chattypeople.

2. Create a personalized experience for your customers

By implementing your chatbot correctly, you can give your customers a more personalized experience. You can achieve this by creating advertisements that direct your audience to your chatbot via a Messenger window instead of solely to your landing pages.

3. Create an efficient content marketing strategy

You need to integrate personality and humor in your posts in order to engage more and more people to your posts. Avoid posting material without a well defined content marketing strategy, or else you will end up with nothing.

4. Enliven your profiles with a diverse content strategy

Some interesting podcasts, fun videos, and good imagery can get people’s attention. Jazz up your content by using this type of media regularly. Don’t just share text on your social media pages — include other forms of media to catch your audience’s attention. Your brand can also be given additional personality this way.

5. Use Brand Promoters

Your best promotional tool is the people who love your brand. Instead of continually searching for new customers, why not leverage the ones you already have? Employees are another resource that you could rely on.

6. Establish a Social Media Budget

A successful social media campaign requires the right budget. Not only this, leveraging that budget with the right strategy will be the most cost-effective way for you to reach your chosen target audience. 

Automation of Social Media Marketing

You can optimize social media marketing using different tools. This includes scheduling social posts before the time or republishing popular articles. Automation of publication, engagement and management helps reduce the hours spent on maintaining and growing brand accounts.

Here are a few tips to ace automation of SMM

• Publish posts during peak audience times.
• Keep a steady queue of posts
• Analyze social data
• Set up automatic response to customers

Conclusion

It is to keep in mind that Social Media is here. It’s not going away; not a passing fad. Thus, be where your customers are: in social media. In a nutshell, social media marketing is all about creating content that brings your audience together as a community and inspiring authentic conversations while increasing your brand’s awareness.