What is Social Media Marketing?
In a nutshell, Social Media Marketing means marketing on social networks or the promotion of goods and services through digital media. It could be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Quora, Tumblr, or Youtube. Also, Google My Business listing is important in local search engines.
Why is Social Media Marketing Important?
However, not all businesses are aware of the benefits of social media marketing. In fact, 60% of small businesses aren’t using social media to promote their business. Social media marketing requires both strategy and creativity. Its importance cannot be overstated. It’s so important that 97% of marketers are using social media and 78% of salespeople outsell their peers by using social media for their business. Plus, its benefits extend far beyond increasing sales.
Why is google my business important for SEO?
Google My Business is essential for Local SEO as it enables your business listing to appear in local search results for queries specific to your products or services. Even broad queries with large search volumes display local results in the three-pack, and this is something small business owners can capitalize on.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing
1. Growing your brand awareness: Social media marketing will make it easy to spread the word about your products and mission.
2. Increasing your traffic: Using social media and linking it to your website will increase your traffic tremendously.
3. Promoting your products and services: This is ultimately why you invest in marketing, right?
Here are the best practices for an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy channel-wise.
- Figure out how many times you want to post a day
- Use paid ads to promote content, increase awareness, and offer discounts
- Respond to fans
- Tag relevant pages if you’re discussing them.
- How many tweets to send on daily. Tweets should include
- Videos
- Content offers
- Call to action
- Attach image
- Retweet influencers
- Follow relevant people every day
- Monitor keywords and mentions
- Respond to tweets
- Prepare a list of influencers
Linkedin is a different breed, here’s what you need to know
- Update your status a few times a week
- Scan industry groups a few times a week
- Learn to update your company profile
- Use LinkedIn to research prospects
- Instagram is all about pictures, so use your creativity
- Try Instagram Story
- Try IGTV Videos
- Create an appealing bio
- Hashtag it!
- Give Shoutouts to people on your post or story
Youtube
- Use quality filming equipment. You don’t need a DSLR camera but ensure that your camera produces crisp and clear images.
- Trim video content down to the essentials. Short and snappy videos are ideal.
- Avoid over-promoting. Integrate visuals and mentions of products in a discreet and natural way.
- Monitor channel analytics.
- Promotion is one of the most important parts of how to use YouTube for your small business. Share links to your videos on your other social media channels, on your business website, and in email newsletters.
- Increased awareness
- Additional blog traffic
- New leads
- Increased sales
Quora
- Helps prospects discover your brand
- Posts appear in search engine results
- Lets you learn more about your target audience
- Helps you discover industry influencers and capture their insight
- Quora can be customer service and reputation management tool
- Quora is great for gleaning competitor insights
Tumblr
- Easy tracking of essential measure metrics
- Opportunity to create more engaging content
- Brands create compelling landing pages on Tumblr
- It improves SEO ranking for brands
- Easier to create a relatable brand personality online
FAQs
Q: What skills should a social media marketer have?
- First and foremost, social media marketers should possess the skills of listening, communicating, and problem-solving.
- Should be a good storyteller.
- Should be able to read and interpret data and should be able to understand the return on investment.
Q: What should I post?
A – You should post relevant content that is interesting and/or entertaining to your potential customers. If you are stuck for ideas, you can always ask customers directly what they would like to read about. You can also follow influencers in the niche to get inspired and to share their valuable content. Truth is, the more you write, the more you discover unexplored topics or topics that can be looked at from a different angle.
Q: When should I post?
A – Knowing the best time to post is an art to master when active on social media. Do remember that time of posting varies from business to business, depending on the time when your audience is active.
However, a business that has an international audience needs to keep this in mind while posting on social media. After detailed research, look for the possible time when a majority of your audience would be available to engage with your posts. Posting at a time when they are offline will do your business no good.
Q: Which social media platforms should my business have a presence on?
- It is advisable to be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.
- If your product is visually appealing, consider Instagram and Pinterest.
- If your product needs contextual information consider Quora, Website Blog etc.
Q: Should I prefer paid advertising?
A – Many businesses are already leveraging the benefits of paid advertising. However, many businesses are in a fix, whether to initiate paid advertising or whether to advertise without any paid services.
This depends on your budget & whether your business is well established or a startup. A startup with a small budget may or may not consider paid advertising. On the other hand, established businesses might prefer paid advertising over organic reach.
Q: How to engage with the audience?
A – You must interact with your audience in the most humane way possible. Do not focus only on selling your products or services, as this comes across as aggressive marketing. The aim should be to engage with your audience and not to self-promote your business. What is the ideal way to interact with an audience? An audience will interact only when they find something of importance and something that interests them.
Q: What is the difference between an ad and a post on social media?
A – Organic and paid social media both have their place in a marketing campaign. Anything that happens on social media without paid promotion is organic. Posts, shares, comments, likes, or messages are easy ways to track your organic social media efforts.
Paid social media is influenced by advertising money spent. If a social media post says “Sponsored”, this means any reaction to it is considered a paid reaction. Paid social media includes boosted posts, ads optimized for clicks, lead generation forms, and video ads. A successful social media marketing strategy is one that utilizes both organic and paid social media. A mix of both organic and paid ensures a larger reach and following.
Q: Is it ok to post the same content on each platform every day? Or should we post different updates on different sites?
A – No. People follow your brand on different platforms for different reasons. This means that you can’t expect to have exactly the same audience across all platforms. But, it also depends on your business type, what product you are offering to the audience.
Q: How to handle negative comments on social media?
- Don’t ignore negative comments
- Apologize sincerely
- Don’t make false promises
- Be polite
- Personalize your message
- Reply instantly
- Explain yourself
Q: What common social media marketing mistakes should my business avoid?
A – Spamming, having multiple profiles on each platform, and not interacting at all with the audience are some of the practices you should steer clear of. Some of these actions cause confusion, while others will determine your audience to downright unfollow and/or even report you. Inconsistency is one of the main traps you could fall into. That could mean starting on a platform and abandoning it just to try another one. It could also mean publishing updates in a frantic manner. Putting some logic into how, when, and where you post the social media posts could tighten the relationship with your audience. If not for anything else, your audience could learn when to expect your updates.