Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of Internet marketing based on using social networks as a channel for reaching your target audience. All you need is a clear goal, social channels that will help you achieve it and a good overview of an investment you can make at this stage. In this guide you will find tips that will help you understand social media marketing and rock your first social media campaign. Our SMM gurus will teach you how to create Facebook campaigns, boost your photos on Instagram and target other businesses via LinkedIn marketing, just to name a few.
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Once your website is ready, it's time to get it in front your potential users, so the social media marketing strategy has to be your next investment. Depending on your available budget you can determine the marketing channel you want to go with. Take your time to make some personal research on different online marketing channels and their benefits to decide where to start. One of the most important advantages of social media marketing is the connection with your target audience without any considerable investments, just by creating engaging organic content.
Social media gives you a megaphone to speak up about something you started or created. It allows you to connect with your friends or their friends as well as people you have never met. In other words, they act as digital flyers you can give out to people in different countries.
After you answer these 3 questions, you can start your social media marketing strategy.
- What is the goal you want to achieve?
- What is your available budget?
- Which social networks are you going to use?
1 MILLION NEW ACTIVE MOBILE SOCIAL MEDIA USERS SIGN UP EVERY DAY. THAT'S 12 A SECOND
THERE ARE OVER 2.7 BILLION ACTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA USERS
BUT ONLY 2 MILLION OF THESE BUSINESSES PAY FOR ADVERTISING
FINDING THE RIGHT SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM FOR YOUR BUSINESS
When people talk about social media, they usually mean Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. All of them are without a doubt a good start if you are still trying to figure out where your audience is. While Facebook is mainly used to connect with real people's lives, Twitter is used to share short and important information or news that could have benefits for many. As opposed to Instagram which is mainly a visual platform. But social media marketing is more than just Facebooking and Tweeting. It is a combination of social media strategies and plans mixed with many social media campaigns and even different social media networks in order to reach one or several business goals.
Other social media platforms like LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat and YouTube are rapidly growing and opening their doors to help you find your perfect audience. What makes each network unique is the means of communication - some use messages or images and others may use videos or even a mix of media. We can say that Linkedin is a professional network, mostly suitable for B2B marketing, but that doesn't mean you can't reach your audience there as well. It just means that you will have to follow some communication rules when engaging with them.
Let's have a look at an example - you are a web designer looking to freelance.
Business Goal - your goal is to create many websites
Audience - Small business owners
Age - 25 +
Business Size - 5 + Employees
Your first steps could be on LinkedIn and Facebook or Behance. If you want to reach people who have a creative business, like baking, you should consider Instagram and Pinterest, because this is where your potential customers might be putting their marketing efforts.
FACEBOOK ADDS 500,000 NEW USERS EVERY DAY, WHICH IS 6 NEW PROFILES EVERY SECOND.
6000 TWEETS ARE CREATED EVERY SECOND.
300 HOURS OF VIDEO ARE UPLOADED TO YOUTUBE EVERY MINUTE.
LINKEDIN HAS 450 MILLION MEMBERS.
30% OF INTERNET USERS ARE NOW ON INSTAGRAM.
WHY FACEBOOK MARKETING IS IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?
Facebook is definitely one of the most popular social media platforms for advertisers. This social media platform offers a complex marketing tool for the whole advertising process - from creating a business page to creating and measuring ad success Ad Manager. Everything you need to make your first marketing steps - they have it ready for you.
In order to start marketing on Facebook, you will have to follow these steps:
FILL OUT BASIC INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS
SET A PROFILE AND A COVER IMAGE
START INVITING YOUR FRIENDS TO LIKE YOUR NEW PAGE
At the very beginning, focus on building your Facebook community by sharing relevant and interesting content. It can be anything from tips on how to solve problems, relevant to your business to sharing images of your creative processes. Once your community starts engaging with your business, you can start advertising and reaching more people.
Tip: create a content strategy and work on your business credibility. Once they know they can trust you, they will be more likely to engage with your business!
TWEETING FOR BEGINNERS
Facebook is in fact very popular and very beneficial for marketers, but if your audience is mainly on Twitter, then tweeting should be your thing. On Twitter, you are actually having a short conversation with your audience. Every message you send is limited by the number of characters, which means that every message you intend to send has to be clear and catchy. In order to start engaging with your Twitter community, you will have to create a Twitter business account. Once your account is created, it is time to start following people and gain followers. To get you organized, use Tweetdeck. The best Twitter tool for tracking, organizing and engagement. Also, make sure you turn on Analytics for your Twitter account to measure and boost your impact on Twitter.
FOCUS ON THESE THREE TYPES OF PEOPLE:
1
INFLUENCERS IN YOUR NICHE
2
ACTIVE USERS
3
YOUR CUSTOMERS AND FRIENDS
This is NOT the Twitter logo
You are only a good tweet away from gaining followers, so pay particular attention to the information you are sharing. Give your community valuable and trustworthy tweets. Share links, images and videos that will give them the option to find out more about the news you share. And finally, become a part of the community by posting info, sharing thoughts and engaging in conversation.
Social Media Marketing Tip: Another way to connect with your followers is to get listed and start digging through other people's lists. If you find a list of a person who is an influencer in your niche, that is probably your stash of gold. Try to connect with people on the list and hope they will find your account interesting enough to follow you back and connect with you.
WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS
Think of it as a search engine for visuals, because this is where people look for inspiration. So, if your potential clientele is interested in such a visual platform, you must establish a strong presence on Pinterest as well.
How do people use Pinterest?
You can’t find lot’s of politics here, unlike Facebook and Twitter. “People spend their time on Pinterest to organize different design and cooking projects, also to feel positive and optimistic about the future” says Pinterest Co-founder Evan Sharp. It’s like an inspiration generator tool for the web and not only. You can find lots of DIY projects, recipes, web design tips, comics, graphics and much more.
Does Pinterest fit your Business?
Pinterest is extra mobile friendly. In fact 80% of Pinterest users are using it on mobile.Famous brands like Honda, Stevia, Absolut, Dunkin Donuts, Burberry and many more are taking advantage of this opportunity and choose to advertise on Pinterest. You can get acquainted with all the Business success stories of Pinterest here.
Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social networking service owned by Facebook, Inc. It was initially developed as an app only for IOS users. It’s the most popular social media platform among millennials with 1B+ Monthly Active user and 500M+ Daily Active users.
How do people use Instagram?
Instagram is used all over the world for sharing stories, photos and videos. If you can attract your potential users through this channel - go for it! Instagram helps you connect with them on a personal level. If you have strong visual content, then you have an advantage - use it. Many marketers tend to choose UI appealing visual content over long textual content. Visual content is rapidly progressing into being the largest content medium online. Unless pagers come back, concise, appealing visual content is the content of today. Moreover, Instagram has recently launched IGTV - a mobile friendly video platform. It really shows that the company cares about their users experience.
Does Instagram fit your Business?
Facebook is behind Instagram, which means the potential of growth is inevitable for businesses. Since they took over, Instagram into a commercial platform. The more marketers are interested in using Instagram to reach their clients the more they’ll make their consumers be eager to follow their favorite brands. There are quite a few advertising features on Instagram - Photo Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads, Stories Ads and Collection Ads. But this is not all. Instagram is the most popular platform among lifestyle influencers. If you know the influencers in your niche, then you can outreach them and ask for a price list of their services. If you don’t then you can use this handy tool by Social Bakers to find the influencers in your niche.
You create Instagram ads from Facebook Ad Manager and the process is the same as Facebook advertising. When deciding on your ad placement, you are choosing where your ad will be shown - only Facebook, only Instagram or both.
Approach Instagram advertising not as a type of classic advertising but as a means of communication with your potential customers. This means that you should focus on creating ads that tell a story, rather than a typical promotional ad. Instagram bases its organic advertising strategy on hashtags. You should get familiar with popular hashtags in your industry. Think of hashtags as your keywords, and yes, use Google Keywords planner to find out what is popular!
Source: Instagram
Source: Instagram
Source: Instagram
Source: Instagram
Source: Instagram
SNAPCHAT
Snapchat lets you easily talk with friends, view Live Stories from around the world, and explore news in Discover. Snapchat was one of the first social platforms to take advantage of the mobile vertical experience.
How do people use Snapchat?
A Snap is a pic or a video you send through Snapchat to your friends. A video snap can be 10 seconds long. Snaps are deleted once they are seen by all recipients, unless you add them to your Story, only then they disappear in 24 hours. Unopened Snaps get deleted in 30 days. Stories show your shared photos and videos shared with all friends.
Does Snapchat fit your business?
According to the official Snapchat website, on average Snapchatters use the app over 20 times a day, and spend an average of 30 minutes on the app, creating 3 billion Snaps daily. Snapchat users are between the ages of 18 and 34. If this platform fits your business, and you have a decent camera on your phone, go ahead, give it a try. After-all, exploring all social networks will give you an insight which one fits you and your potential users best.
There are 250 million monthly active users on Pinterest.
There are 186 million people using Snapchat every day globally.
PRO TIP
USE ANALYTICS
All your favorite Social Media platforms offer free built in analytics tools - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, you name it. Use these tools to make data driven changes to your Social Media Marketing Strategy.
➊ Make data an integral part of your advertising and business strategy.
➋ Marketers who set data-driven KPIs are more inclined to meet their goals.
CONCLUSION
Once your website is set up, designing a search engine strategy should be your priority. Invest time in on-page optimization and immediately after, start building quality links leading to your website. We strongly advise that you do everything by the book and don't take any shortcuts, otherwise you risk getting a penalty from Google which will undermine your SEO efforts. Just follow tips and recommendations in this guide, they will surely help you avoid all common SEO mistakes your competitors make.
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