WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING?

Social media marketing utilizes social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and many others for marketing.

Social media platforms are one of the best and almost free of cost for growing brand awareness, generating leads, and increasing sales and traffic to your website.

Through social media marketing, you can grow your followers by sharing content, listening and engaging with them, and influencing them.

What are the benefits of social media marketing?

Social media marketing is beneficial for businesses of all sizes, influencers, marketers, bloggers, YouTubers and many others.

Here are some of the benefits

Increasing Reach:

You can reach large numbers of audiences through social media platforms.

Every popular social media platform has millions of active users and you can connect with them with your posts, videos, messages and various other ways.

You can convey your marketing messages to the users of social media and make them your followers and customers with your friendly approach.

Targeting Audience:

There are a lot of groups and communities on social media that share information on a particular topic.

You can find out easily these communities and convey your marketing message in between them.

For example, if you want to target seniors then you can follow the hashtag senior, mature or fifty-plus to find out about seniors groups and communities.

You can also target an audience of a particular area, region or country through various country-based groups.

For example, if you want to target Indians, you can find out a lot of Indian groups and communities where you can share your marketing messages.

Similarly, you can also target audiences of different age groups, different behaviours and a particular gender.

To target an audience you have first define your target audience and analyse users on social media.

Relationship building:

Social media platforms are the best for building a personal relationship with your followers, customers and clients.

You can build a relationship with them by continuously being in touch with them. You can like and comment on their post, message them privately and engage them on your posts.

Promoting products and services:

Social media are best for promoting your products and services to potential customers.

You can promote by constantly posting engaging posts, writing benefits of products or services, sharing reviews that you received about your products and many other ways.

You can also advertise for a targeted audience on social media if you have a budget for advertising.

Generating leads:

From social media, you can collect contact details such as email addresses, phone numbers or WhatsApp numbers from your future customers for messaging them or contacting them personally.

These leads can be collected by valuable posts and offering them something specific.

You can utilize these leads to generate regular passive income and grow your business.

Driving traffic to your website:

Social media can be utilised for driving traffic to your website or a blog site.

You can share your website links along with attractive posts, or related posts of other users. Please keep in mind that don't spam with your links otherwise your account can be banned or temporarily inactive for a certain period as a warning for you.

You can also share your website links through messages to individual users or chat groups of users.

Influencing users:

With your unique thoughts and styles, you can gain a lot of followers and influence them.

On social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat, you can share your images, reals and videos to gain followers.

On Twitter, you can gain followers by sharing your point of view. Your unique thoughts can attract users to follow you.

After gaining a lot of engaged followers you can take benefit of social media through sponsored posts and getting paid by companies, brands or services.

How to start social media marketing?

You can start doing social media marketing by following these steps and activities:-

a) Sign-up:

Signing up on the social media platforms is the first step.

Choose social media according to your product or services or your marketing plan.

For example, if you just want to do marketing for yourself as an influencer, you should choose Instagram.

b) Build profile:

Build an attractive and informative profile with your pic or brand logo so that the users can relate with you.

You can also add your website link, YouTube channel link or links to your social media accounts to contact you.

c) Post content:

Regularly posting content increases reach to large numbers of users.

Your content can be videos, images, audio messages or texts. You can also share your blog post links or write small stories, poems or articles.

Through your content, you can reach and connect with users and convey your message.

d) Engage with followers:

Engagement with your followers is also very important.

Try to reply to a comment on your post as soon as possible. It is better to stay on social media after posting or you can keep your notifications on so that you can reply soon.

This will increase engagement and reach.

Actually, as per the social media algorithm, posts with more engagement catch more eyeballs.

e) Read social media conversations:

By reading and listening to users' conversations on your posts or posted by somebody else you can conclude about the behaviour and interest of the users.

This will give you ideas for your content and what people are talking about your brand, your competitor's brands and your industry.

f) Analyse:

Every social media platform provides you analytic tools for analysis.

You can track and analyse reach, engagements and sales by utilizing available tools on social media.

You can analyse which sort of content is been liked or disliked by the users hence you can plan a strategy for your next content or marketing campaigns.

g) Run advertising:

Running an advertisement is one of the best ways to reach more users quickly.

Paid advertisements can target specific demography, behaviour and interests. Hence you get the benefits of reaching to the targeted audience quickly.

Before going for an advertisement consider your budget and economic conditions. Paid advertising may be very expensive for you.

Better to search for alternatives or use free options if you are not in a hurry.

Conclusion:

Social media marketing is worthwhile for the growth of the business. It's effective for reaching and connecting to the targeted audience and achieving your marketing goals.

Hence if you are serious about growing your business you should consider social media marketing in your marketing strategies and campaigns.