WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING?

Social media marketing is the method of achieving marketing goals for businesses through social media sites. It includes activities like text, photo and video updates.

WHY SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING?

It is a very effective and powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach desired customers. Since social networks are one of the fastest growing industries in the world, social media marketing creates a platform to build a brand and increase a brand’s popularity, through building relationships and communicating with potential customers.

CHOOSING THE BEST PLATFORM FOR MARKETING

There are various SMM sites available nowadays and each SMM site requires a different approach. Allow us to illustrate how these different SMM sites can be used to achieve your marketing goals.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is the biggest social network in the world with an average of 2.07 billion monthly active users. Hence it only makes sense that one needs to be on Facebook to achieve results.
Here are some ways you can market of Facebook:

1. Create your company page

Pages are the simplest way to start marketing on Facebook. They are very easy to set up and moreover its free. Pages are similar to profiles, but its used to promote businesses and organizations. They do not have any restrictions on how many people friends they can have. A unique feature only offered in Pages is Page Insights. This allows the administrators of the Page to see what activity the Page has been receiving during a period of time, even in a graphical representation.

2. Create Ads

Facebook Ads are the best way to reach desired audience. You can create ads targeted at specific geographic areas, ages, education levels, and even the types of devices used for browsing. Unlike pages, Ads aren’t free on Facebook but provide powerful targeting parameters.

There are two ways by which ads can be run, pay per click or pay per impression. Facebook helps you decide a budget that is most suitable for your ad. You can even set daily limits so that you don’t end up blowing your entire budget.

3. Create Groups

Facebook groups acts like a discussion forum. It provides a platform for free communication between service provider and the consumer. Restrictions can also be placed on the groups to filter who all can visit the page. Groups are sometimes preferred over pages as it gives the audience the freedom to interact with the organization and get their queries and complains heard.

LINKEDIN

LinkedIn is a professional networking site. With over 106 million active users, it is the go to place to meet different professionals from different fields. It is more focused on b2b than b2c.
Here are some ways you can promote your business on LinkedIn:

1. Create your company page

Your LinkedIn company page is your business’s LinkedIn profile. Creating a company page and linking it to your profile helps you to add more content and information which in turn offers customers to learn more about the business, know about the people who work there and interact with relevant content.

2. Post great content

The main aim here is to attract the right audience. Thus, posting content that targets the right kind of people is key. Get colleagues to share and like posts. This helps posts to reach a larger audience.

It is also important to note that you don’t lose the interest of the audience. So, update frequently. Posts with great visuals go a long way since LinkedIn isn’t a very visual network. More clicks, shares and comments are great indicators of great content.

3. Groups

Creating a group on LinkedIn helps you to hold discussions with the audience regarding the services your business offers. This helps engage the people and it makes sure that the members know what your business is about.

It is also important to participate in other groups. This helps to identify new audiences, interact with new users and create new relations.

4. LinkedIn Ad campaigns

LinkedIn ads helps you find what you want. Be it target executives, influencers, or job seekers, there are numerous ways to advertise on LinkedIn through different ad types, including self-serve, partner programs, and other options.

The benefit of using LinkedIn’s sponsored content is that is helps reach a larger audience, attract more company page followers and increase clicks on various platforms like desktops, mobiles etc.

TWITTER

With 330 million monthly active users twitter is one of the best microblogging social networking site available online. People follow (subscribe) to your Twitter account, and you follow other people. This allows you to read, reply to and easily share their tweets with your followers (retweet).

Here are some ways twitter can be used to promote your business:

1. Showcase your brand

Your Twitter profile helps tell your business story to the Twitter community. Tweets help convey messages and to communicate with your audience. So, open communication is key. Respond to tweets about your business. You can retweet posts that are positive and address negative tweets in a respectful manner.

Even though Twitter offers us a 140-character word limit, it’s better to keep tweets short and sweet. The key is tweet often and not tweet long. An ideal length of a tweet would be around 20-25 characters. This encourages others to retweet or add additional content.

2. Mentions and Tagging

A great way to increase social ties with other businesses is to retweet their content. This will lead to others retweeting your content.

Another way of mentioning others in your tweets is by using @username. This is called tagging. Tagging is used when you want to include someone who was at a particular event, to give credit when credit is due or to increase the reach of tweets by encouraging others to share it.

3. Using Hashtags

#Hashtags is a way to organize your tweets around a specific events/keywords/topic. They act as hyperlinks to tweets associated with the hashtag. It’s also a good way to find prospects who may have an interest in your business, products. Be sure to not use more than 2 hashtags per tweet. Tweets with not more than 2 hashtags have 21% more engagement than those who have 3 or more hashtags.