What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is a powerful way for companies of all sizes to reach prospects and customers. Your customers are already interacting with brands through social media, and if you’re not talking directly to your audience through social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, you ‘re missing out. Great social media marketing can bring remarkable success to your business, create dedicated brand advocates, and even drive leads and sales.
Social media marketing, or SMM, is a form of internet marketing that involves creating and sharing content on social media networks in order to achieve your marketing and branding objectives. Social media marketing includes activities such as posting text and image updates, videos, and other content that drives public engagement, as well as paid social media advertising.
The Five Core Pillars of Social Media Marketing
- Strategy.
Before you start creating social media marketing campaigns, consider the objectives of your business. Starting a social media marketing campaign with no social strategy in mind is like wandering around a forest without a map — you might have fun, but you’ll probably get lost.
Here are some questions that need to be asked when defining your social media marketing objectives:
- What do you hope to achieve through social media marketing?
- Who’s your target audience?
- Where would your target audience hang out, and how would social media be used?
- What message would you like to send to your social media marketing audience?
- Planning and Publishing.
Social media marketing for small businesses usually begins with a consistent presence on social media. Nearly three billion people use social media. By being present on social media platforms, you are giving your brand the opportunity to discover your future customers.
Publishing on social media is as simple as sharing a blog post, an image, or a video on a social media platform. It’s just like how you share your personal Facebook profile. But you’re going to want to plan your content ahead of time instead of spontaneously creating and publishing content. Also, to ensure that you are maximizing your reach on social media, you need to publish great content that your audience likes, at the right timing and frequency.
- Listening and Engagement.
As your business and social media continue to grow, conversations about your brand will also increase. People will comment on your social media posts, tag you in their social media posts, or send you a message directly.
People could even talk about your brand on social media without letting you know. So you’re going to want to monitor your brand’s social media conversations. If it’s a positive comment, you’ll get a chance to surprise and delight them. Otherwise, you can offer support and correct a situation before things get worse.
- Analytics.
On the way, whether you’re publishing content or engaging in social media, you ‘re going to want to know how your social media marketing works. Are you reaching more people on social media than you did last month? How many positive notes do you get for a month? How many people have used your brand’s hashtag on their social media posts?
The social media platforms themselves provide a basic level of this information. You can use the wide range of social media analytics tools available, such as Buffer Analyze, to obtain more in-depth analytics information or to compare easily across social media platforms.
- Advertising.
When you have more money to grow your social media marketing, social media advertising is an area you can consider. Social media ads allow you to reach a wider audience than those who follow you.
Social media advertising platforms are so powerful nowadays that you can specify exactly who to display your ads. You can create target audiences based on their demographics, interests, behavior, and more.
When you run multiple social media advertising campaigns at once, you can consider making bulk changes, automating processes, and optimizing your ads using a social media advertising tool.
