What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of online marketing. The goal is to have your content go viral across the main social media networks. This may include, videos, articles, tweets, and any content that you can create and your audience will like and share. This is organic social media marketing, you can however also utilise paid social media marketing.
You need to plan
Simply posting across your social media platforms might not be enough to entice viewers into paying customers and clients, although it is a start.
You need to plan and work out how best to create useful and unique content that people will find interesting and informative.
You need to think about what your goal is when posting. You need to create a focused campaign, otherwise, you could be throwing darts at a dartboard hoping to hit the bullseye.
Simple aspects of social media planning could be:
- Who is your target audience?
- Where will you find your target audience on social media?
- What are you aiming to achieve?
- What message do you want to get across to your audience?
- How will you create content that will go viral?
- How will your social media posts convert your audience into paying customers and clients?
Examples:
A B-2-B business usually performs better utilising Linkedin and Twitter. A visual business like a modelling agency does best focusing on utilising Pinterest and Instagram.
How social media marketing can help your business
- Raise brand awareness and identity.
- Increase web traffic to your website.
- Increase the value of your business.
- Networking.
- Interact with your customers and leads.
Which social media platforms should you use?
You need to know that each social media platform can be used and utilised in a slightly different way. Therefore you will need to adjust your social media marketing plan to really take advantage of each unique aspect of a particular social media platform.
Here are the main Social Media Platforms other Businesses use
Twitter is fantastic for keeping your audience up-to-date with what your business is currently working on and any new products or services you are bringing out.
You should follow your competitors and anyone interested in your business field. If someone you follow posts something you like you should like or retweet this. People will often return the favour.
You can tweet about anything. Try to keep your tweets relevant to your business and we do suggest keeping religion and politics out of your tweets. You can alienate half your audience with one tweet and damage your brand.
Ideas for Tweets – discounts and specials you are offering, news, new items you have for sale, articles you have written or enjoyed reading (re-tweet), and remember to post anything positive you read or see written about your business.
Facebook is fantastic as you can create a business fan page. You should spend a little time creating a beautifully designed and layout page.
This is also an extremely cheap way of creating leads and followers that you can over time turn into paying clients and customers.
Youtube
If you are good at creating video content YouTube is your go-to platform. Not only this, but you also get paid (long term) from adverts YouTube places on each video you upload.
Videos can go viral and thus more people will subscribe to your channel. The more views you have the more chance you will make ad money and also convert viewers into paying customers.
You can create “how-to” videos, fun and interesting videos showcasing your products or demonstrating your expertise in a business field.
Pinterest and Instagram
These platforms are really useful for businesses to showcase photos of their products.
Simple examples:
- A clothing company can showcase its latest range using photos.
- A restaurant can take photos of their new food dishes.
Linkedin is probably the best platform to create a serious business profile on. It is also a business-focused networking site where you can show people you are an authority in your field and find businesses to partner with. Linkedin is also a great place to create an online CV.
Don’t forget to also join Business and networking groups and start chatting with others. You can even create your own business group.
You can offer mentoring, post jobs, and post business articles you have written.
Finally, you can get recommendations from clients and other business people which helps build trust in your brand.
Social media tips
1 Brainstorm and plan.
Research your audience and plan ahead of time what to post and why.
2 Relevant and informative content.
Post regularly, but not too much, and make sure each time there is a reason behind your post. Try to keep your posts relevant to your audience’s needs and post quality over quantity.
3 Enhance your brand’s standing.
The idea behind your posts is to build your brand name, so keep this in mind when you are posting and commenting on other people’s posts. If in doubt, stay professional. Avoid poor grammar, heckling, arguing too much, and de-valuing your brand.
4 Post what you are doing.
Do you have a new product or service? Keep your audience up-to-date with your latest news.
5 Re-tweet, like comment, and share other people’s work.
6 Monitor your competition.
Social media makes it extremely easy to keep an eye on your competition, what they are working on, where their audience is coming from, what posts they receive the most recognition or comment from.
We wish you good luck with your social media campaigns and hope that you enjoyed reading this article. We would be very grateful if you would kindly share this article with your friends, colleagues, and across your social media platforms. Thank you.
Our social media services
We have a dedicated, experienced team of social media marketing specialists available to help your business gain a solid social media presence and gain more visitors, views, comments, and ultimately more sales.
We will help you create and upload quality social media posts, we can monitor and maintain as many social media platforms as you have.
Do you need us to help you create a social media account and profile? We are happy to work with you on anything you need. Please visit our website social media service here.
