There are over 4 billion people with access to the internet, 85% of who are on social media. With an over 3.5 billion subscription, it can be a great tool for marketing. Social media marketing is a series of strategic content sharing and marketing ploys designed to target a specific goal such as increased traffic and engagement level.
This type of marketing involves developing and sharing content such as images, videos or articles that drives traffic levels and user engagement towards a brand’s social media pages and website. It regularly makes use of paid advertising strategies, which includes buying likes, views and follows.
Creating an effective social media marketing strategy requires thorough planning. You need to consider your business goals, as well as those of the campaign when starting out. A social strategy is developed by asking important marketing questions, which will help you tweak the plan for maximum benefit. You need to consider the specific goals of the strategy, your target audience and their use of social media, which includes their preferred platform and type of content, as well as your specific message.
What are the benefits of social media marketing?
Social media will increase traffic both to your website and social pages. As your marketing strategy picks up pace, more people will want to visit your pages and website to view more content, ask questions and know more about your brand. An increase in traffic levels will boost brand awareness.
This type of marketing also increases user engagement rates. More people will interact with your brand on social media, increasing awareness and helping create a good reputation. Brands can use social media marketing to drive up engagement levels, which will then allow for more interaction. This could be great for developing loyalty among the clients.
You can use social media to drive up conversion levels and increase sales. Many eCommerce platforms use social media marketing to make users aware of their products and services. Without social media advertising, conversion rates are usually low. Through the fairly priced paid advertising means available, brands are able to make their products more visible to users over a longer amount of time. Making users better informed over these products and services, as well as making constant reminders of how they can access them will improve conversion levels and boost revenues for your eCommerce site.
Social media marketing strategies can be designed to target specific audiences. Your brand will be better able to address specific persons on the internet, and could improve revenues as a result. You will have better interaction with key audience groups and improve your communication with them, which is also a great tool to develop brand loyalty.
You can create better brand awareness and build a great brand identity through positive brand association. Your social media marketing strategy can incorporate other brands, which will increase the size of your audience. Marketing on social media in conjunction with other brands will also help you develop great partnerships with them, which could help improve the performance of future marketing strategies.
How can you maximize benefit from social media marketing?
You should always respond to users on your social media pages. Aside from boosting user engagement levels, it also helps to create a relationship with your clients and improves your brand’s reputation, which will affect the success of any strategy you employ. Brands which respond to their users’ queries, questions and complaints quickly and efficiently are more likely to attract users to their pages, which could make their social media campaigns more successful. On the other hand, brands which selectively respond to positive comments and those which do not respond quick enough are likely to push away users and may develop a bad reputation.
Users will be more likely to follow your marketing strategy if your social media pages appear to have a larger following. Brands with little exposure have a more difficult time winning over new users. Conversely, brands with a larger following are more likely to attract users to their campaign. You can overcome this difference by using paid marketing strategies such as buying follows, likes and views to boost the performance of your campaign. For instance, you can get every day 100 more followers on Instagram to improve your brand’s strength on the platform and gain better analytic levels with each marketing campaign.
There are different demographics across various social media platforms. Users are also limited to certain types of content on these platforms. When developing your strategy, you should consider content for each one. There is no one-size-fits-all content that will be successful on every platform. You need to have your images and videos ready for Instagram, short series of witty and detailed tweets for Twitter, and articles and posts for Facebook among others. This way, your strategy will cover all platforms on which you are active, as well a help target your desired audience successfully on each one.
Your social media marketing strategy should always include visual content. A recent study found that users are significantly more likely to view visual content as opposed to text and audio. If you want to achieve your goals, you need to draw in larger numbers of users. You can do this easily by taking advantage of the visual aspect. Choosing the right visual content might be more difficult than you think. It is important to avoid violence, drugs and any use of foul language which may push away users. These are more likely to cause a negative reaction and affect your brand’s reputation. It is recommended that you try out your campaign on a sample group to judge the reception and weigh the possibility of success.
Final word
Social media is a great tool to boost user engagement and traffic levels, as well as drive up sales and conversions. Your brand can benefit from strategic social media marketing. However, you need to develop your strategy with a plan that revolves around the specific business goals to achieve any benefit from it. You may also need to choose your content and platforms carefully to maximize returns.