It’s hard to ignore the power of social media marketing with nearly 60% of the worldwide population (now 4.48 billion social media users which has increased by more than 13% since this time last year) spending time on one or more social platforms regularly. 

No matter the size of your business, learning how to utilize social media marketing can help you achieve your business goals by attracting new clients, creating a buzz for new products or services, and building a loyal customer base. 

What is Social Media Marketing? 

Marketing your business can be easily overshadowed by day-to-day operations. Social media marketing is an extremely powerful tool to draw in new and existing clients to learn more about your products or services.

 

Social Media Marketing, or SMM, is a form of digital marketing that promotes a product or service to audiences across various social media platforms. These promotions may include one or multiple still images (a carousel or slide show), videos, and custom graphics (infographics, illustrations, etc.) posted on social media or in a Paid advertising campaign to help drive interest to your brand. 

What can Social Media Marketing do for my Business? 

There are countless benefits to using social media to promote your business. Some of the top benefits may include: 

• Increased brand awareness
• Improved brand loyalty 
• Communicating with potential customers 
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Higher website traffic
• Generating more leads

To reap these benefits, you must first identify your business goals. Then, create a social media marketing strategy that will help track and measure your accomplishments. 

A Strategy that Works

A social media marketing strategy is a summarized plan that can help keep you and your team on track to achieve your business goals. The first step in creating a winning SMM strategy is to map out a variety of S.M.A.R.T. goals. Be sure to know your target audience, research the competition, and identify top keywords (hashtags) before finalizing your marketing strategy. 

Once an SMM strategy has been established, we can look at the two types of social media marketing that can help you reach your business goals: Organic vs Paid. 

Organic, which is a completely free method, is becoming much harder to accomplish due to constant algorithm updates. However, it’s not impossible and should be included in your social media marketing strategy. By creating an effective strategy and properly analyzing your social media accounts, you will see some benefits from organic methods. 

On the other hand, a Paid/sponsored campaign will allow you to deliver your ad content to a targeted audience. This audience can be based on their location, age, gender, profession, income, buying habits, and even personal interests. If you can allocate even a small daily budget ($10-$25) towards a Paid campaign, it will help put your product or service in front of an audience who may be more likely to purchase your products. 

Which Social Media Platform is Right for My Business? 

There are quite a few social media platforms to choose from. And each platform will require a unique SMM strategy to see results. 

• Facebook – an industry leader and one of the most visited platforms worldwide. Although organic reach is limited, but create a Facebook Business page to take advantage of their unique tools and analytics.
• Instagram – a highly visual platform focused around images and videos (owned by Facebook) with options to sell and show product information directly from a post. 
• Twitter – great for updating your audience in real-time and engaging with other industry leaders, influencers, and related fields. 
• Pinterest – a fast-growing visual platform leader that’s ideal for retail and bloggers.  
• LinkedIn – if you’re looking to reach a professional audience for B2B marketing or educational content, this is the platform for you. 
• Youtube – primarily for creating and sharing video content, such as ‘How-To’ videos, tutorial guides, and vlogs. 

In the infographic below, you’ll learn more about social media platforms that work best for your brand.

Creating Value through Content

Now you’ve got a proper strategy in place and have chosen which social media platform to move forward with. The next step is to create relevant, share-worthy content that speaks to your key audience. It’s important to: 

• Understand your Target Audience to help make impactful social media content that people can resonate with.
• Focus on Essential Messages you want to deliver to your audience. Let them know your business is there, offering solutions to their problems.
• Know your Brand Image to maintain a consistent look, feel, and voice throughout all of your content across every platform. 
• Reuse and Repurpose content to keep marketing costs low
• Properly Test and Optimize content whenever possible. This allows you to see what’s working with your audience and what’s not. 
• Be Consistent! Review each platform’s analytics regularly, create a content calendar, and use automation (such as Creator Studio) whenever possible. 
• Include Website Links and CTA’s (Call-to-Action) that direct your key audience back to your website to take action in downloading free resources, sign up for a newsletter, or make a purchase.  

Understanding Analytics

As you progress through the calendar year, it’s important to understand and review your social media analytics regularly. This will give you a better understanding of who your target demographic is and how well your content is performing. You can even calculate your ROI over time by tracking and measuring your analytics, which provides more insights into where your marketing spend is best spent. 

With consistent planning and analysis, social media marketing can be a fantastic tool to help you reach new audiences at a minimal cost. And, if you’re not quite sure where to start, schedule a free consultation. We’re happy to discuss how social media marketing could benefit your business!