SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING – AN EMERGING TREND

 

What is Social Media Marketing?

With the advent of social media and the internet, it is obvious that there are several platforms where people spend their time to get to know what is in the trend and stay connected with the lives of their loved ones. With that kept in mind, businesses have found a new platform to market their products and services and build traffic. While some of us use social media to post pictures, connect with friends and family, there is an entire niche working through social media and they call it Social Media Marketing (SMM).

  Social Media Marketing is the technique used by different businesses where they utilize different social media networks to create and share content about them. It is basically connecting the brand to its respective audience and managing the sales. Let us further dive into what significant platforms are being used for this purpose:

·        Facebook
·        Twitter
·        Instagram
·        LinkedIn
·        YouTube
·        Reddit
·        Pinterest

Marketing on any of these platforms can prove to be significant. Most companies use more than one social media applications to promote and market their business. Another interesting fact is that there are businesses that do not exist physically as a company, they just market themselves on the social platforms and they are successful. Mostly, such businesses are small home-based workers showing their skills with the help of such interfaces.

How is it Carried out?

There is no hard and fast rule on how social media marketing should be carried out however successful social media marketers suggest the following steps to be carried out:

1.      Strategy:

The first step to start showcasing your business on social media is to build a well-thought and planned strategy. You should find answers to a few questions. Some of them could be:

      ·      Do you want to increase your brand’s awareness or simply attract traffic to the website?
·        Which social media networks best suit your goal?
·        What type of content will you be sharing?
·        Will you be creating ads and publishing them on social platforms?

2.      Plan and Publish:

Next up, you should plan on the content you are going to publish. The content should be organic, well thought, and original. You should also decide on the number of posts you will be publishing within a day or a week. Plan, create and publish the content to get going.

3.      Engage and Update:

After posting to social media, you will start receiving responses. People will comment and question your posts, start tagging you in their posts, or direct message you. You should be active and present to answer the public questions, notice the activities people are tagging you in, and ask for feedback. There is always space for improvements if you are closely connected to your customers. Continuous updates in your content, products, and services will produce good end-results as the customers will feel being listened to.

4.      Analytics:

With your regular posts and engagement, along the way, you also want to compare and analyse the activity, and post insights. This means you will be keeping a track of how many people reached out to you and if you have increased engagement than that of last months. To find that out, social media platforms have created simple tools within the application to keep track of that progress. This way, you will know what your progress is. Besides, there are other tools available in the market to track the progress and activities of your business with the calculated metrics of how well or unwell your business is doing.

These are the basic steps that you should be doing in order to carry out a successful social media marketing campaign for your business. It is also advised that when you get your business in a growing state, you can move further to social media advertising. You can appear on the user’s feed and screen if you have availed Social Media Ads facility for your business.

Why SMM?

Social Media Marketing has made a powerful impact in such a short time. Companies have a separate team functioning as a Digital Marketing team promoting the business using social media marketing strategies. Since every next person uses social media applications, it is necessary for businesses to create their presence on these platforms.

To Conclude, a business should definitely include social media marketing as an important tool to promote itself and grow in its respective field by following the tricks and techniques successful social media marketers suggest.