Social Media Marketing
Social media is more complex than you can imagine. Many of us use this type of media as consumers, however, the opportunities are endless when we are the ones on the other side. Aim to create content on social media for that mass that consumes, interacts, and more importantly, that mass that BUYS.
What is social media?
Social media is a term used to describe an outlet that allows everyone to connect, interact, and share content quickly and efficiently on different platforms such as weblogs, microblogging, social blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc. As you can see, social media is more than apps that you probably use every day on your smartphone or tablet like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat. It is the sum of digital channels with a community-based input whose goal is to provide a space where people can collaborate, interact and share content with each other. Consequently, these help you, our dear content creator, to connect with your audience, build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic.
How Businesses Use Social Media
More and more businesses are incorporating social media in different ways for their marketing, adapting them depending on what they want to achieve as a brand. Usually, businesses apply the five core pillars of social media marketing in their marketing strategies. Let’s go one by one.
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Benefits of Social Media
If you are still doubting the need to incorporate social media into your business marketing strategy, let us explain to you some of the benefits that this tactic will bring to your company. Consider the following facts: According to Hootsuite.com, more than 3 billion use social networks around the world. That means that you have a market composed of tons of people who are constantly consuming content and letting that content influence their purchase decisions. Also, 71% of consumers are more likely to suggest a brand to someone they know if they had a positive experience with it on social media according to an infographic published by Ambassador. That’s considerable amount of people that influence the purchase of your products or services.
Social media provides many benefits for businesses of all industries. It can help build your brand as it’s a great way to increase awareness, connect with customers, and establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry. Additionally, social media marketing can be a great ally for your business growth, as you might increase website traffic, generate more leads, boost sales, or even partner with influencers that will draw the attention of their huge following to your brand.
Social media marketing is pretty useful to promote content that will let your audience recognize you as an expert in the field, as that content is exposed to different audiences, you might go viral. Social media platforms are also beneficial to address issues such as communication crisis, reputation management, customer service, and customer support. By using them, you have a lot of data made specifically for your business. Take advantage of it and use it to learn more about your customers, monitor your competition, and stay on top of your industry trends.
The 5 Pillars of Social Media Marketing
You might be wondering if social media provides so many opportunities for businesses, why some of them simply do not succeed in building their brands, driving more traffic to their website, or increasing their sales. The answer is simple (believe it or not), for social media to work you have to base your content in the five core pillars of social media marketing. Before you publish something on social media, you need to consider that now a days you are what you post. Keeping that in mind, what is the perception you want the world to have about you? Take a step back and let’s review the five core pillars of social media marketing.
When it comes to a social media marketing strategy, the more the better. Think of the strategy as your game plan. It is there to guide your actions towards what you hope to achieve with your content. Therefore, the more details you incorporate into your strategy, the more effective the outcome will be. Everything should serve a purpose. Each post, each reply, each like, and each comment is there for a reason. You need to keep it realistic and achievable. Ideally, a team member like Sensation Enterprises can guide you through all this process. Ask yourself some questions that will help you create a foundation for your strategy such as:
- What are my goals? You might want to increase your brand awareness, drive website traffic and sales, create a community, generate engagement, create a customer support channel for your customers, etc.
- Which social media platforms should I focus on? There are many platforms but you don’t have to be in each one of them. As mentioned above, the most important social media platforms right now are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, and Tik Tok. Every platform is targeted for different audiences. You need to understand your niche to know which ones will be more effective for you.
- What type of content do I want to share? Put on your audience’s shoes and think what type of content will attract them more. A good exercise is to create one or many buyer personas. Consider who is your ideal client and create content on what he/she would like to see. Then you can create content they will find either educational and/or entertaining.
Planification is crucial to have a successful social media strategy. It lets you outline what you want your customers to know about your company without being redundant. Also, it helps you improve the quality of the content you are posting since you can easily refine the text and graphics as you won’t be in a rush to do it. Planning your content ahead of time guarantees that you will post consistently, which along with the right timing and frequency, enables you to maximize your reach on social media. This allows you to be discovered by new potential customers. Another benefit of planning your social media content is that you can also schedule it ahead of time. Make sure you review the metrics and insights social media networks provide to help guide when and where you post.
Everybody has the same objective when publishing content on social media. After weeks of hard work and preparation, you want thousands of people to see and appreciate your content as much as you do. You need to understand that liking a piece of content or not is a matter of perception. Therefore, don’t take any negative commentary or criticism to heart that you might receive along the way.
As your following increases, your engagement will grow as well, which means that your content will have more shares, likes, and comments. Usually, the people in your community will express their opinion by commenting on your social media posts, tagging you on their personal accounts, or sending you direct messages. As a content creator, you should respond to them or have someone do it for you. Monitoring your brand continuously will save you a lot of headaches since trust is key to building your social media. Continuously monitor the reputation of your company by reviewing your profiles daily for positive/negative messages and address them as soon as possible. When someone leaves you negative feedback, make sure to respond with a kind response to show them that you care. Otherwise, do your best to solve the situation before it turns into something difficult to handle.
The great thing about digital marketing and social media specifically, is that all the results obtained from a campaign are measurable. This can range from the pieces of content with higher likes, shares, and engagement, to the budget you are spending in ads. You have tons of data to back up all the
decisions you take regarding the management of your social media profile. Social media marketing analytics and reporting will also let you measure the exact return of investment (ROI) of your marketing campaigns across all the social media platforms you are using.
You might wonder how you’re going to track all this miraculous data, and being honest, that’s up to you. Each social media platform will provide you with basic information about your account such as reach, impressions, interaction, profile visits, best hours to post, gender and location of your followers, etc. However, if you want to know more in-depth information like the number of people that used your hashtag in the past month or how many followers were added to your community within a specific period, is better to use the different social media analytic tools available.
Advertising is a marketing tactic that has been used for centuries around the world. With some minor adaptations, it has been able to survive beyond time; from announcements in newspapers to ads displayed through the internet.
An advertisement represents a paid space, whether digital or physical, to promote products, services, or causes to a target audience that is willing to pay for whatever the company is offering.
Nowadays marketers can reach their ideal customers by deciding who will see the ads they create based on demographic attributes, such as gender, age, education, income, and zip code. To find your ideal customer, or to build your persona, consider all the demographic data mentioned above. Make sure you are precise with this information so your campaigns reach customers that will buy your products or service.
Community Building Principles
Creating content for social media is more than simply posting high-quality content on different platforms. It is all about building a community that’s loyal to your brand, connects with people, and helps them solve any issues they might have. Building a loyal community is the key to success in social media marketing. Your followers are the first promoters of your brand. They will spread information about your business through word of mouth, so you must consider them as crucial pieces in the buying process of your future customers.
There’s no rules written on a stone that can help a business build a loyal community. This is not something that happens from one day to another so you need to be persistent and be patient. Try to show your audience that you are human too. Demonstrate that your business is available, responsive and engaging with what you post. Try to inspire your community with interesting, exciting content and not the same corporate propaganda everyone’s tired of seeing. Tell them your story so they can connect with you and your brand. Keep in mind that this is all about them – your followers, your community, your new possible clients. Therefore, you need to help your community through focusing on customer service, and make that an important asset to your business.
How Sensation Helps You Create Content On Social Media
If you are reading this, you might be wondering how to create that strategic content that we have been talking about since the beginning of this page. To be honest, there is no exact recipe to follow that will work for you. However, there are some simple guidelines that will make your life easier.
Let’s face it, the hardest part of creating content is actually creating the content. Therefore, ask yourself what motivates you to share content? Is it social approval, communicating your ideas, supporting other’s ideas, or entertaining those who follow you? You have already decided what your social media goal are and after answering the previous question, you should now have your purpose to create content. Now you need to start brainstorming your ideas and write a list of possible topics that will fit with your goals. This is definitely a challenge for any business owner since it can get very time-consuming and requires a lot of work to be done correctly. Our team at Sensation Enterprises can help you achieve all your social media goals by developing a strategy that will work for your business, designing eye-catching pieces of content, and monitoring everything that happens within your social media profile(s).
Our team can handle the rest and guide you with developing your content in an enjoyable format for your audience. You might choose videos, graphics, infographics, or blog posts but keep in mind that the format you choose should suit your business.