Social media marketing: how does it work? How do I start?
 |
| How does marketing through social media succeed? |
What is social media marketing? SMM is a form of online marketing that involves creating and sharing content on social media networks to achieve marketing and branding goals.
marketing through social media includes activities such as posting text updates, images, videos and other content that stimulate audience participation, as well as advertising on paid platforms.
3.5 billion daily active users of social networking sites out of 4 billion internet users spend an average of 116 minutes daily on various social media sites, which is the best opportunity to target different categories of customers through social media networks at the moment, the witnesses are most activities and match the type of content for marketing campaigns for your business.
Not taking advantage of social media sites in the e-marketing plan is an unforgivable mistake as it negatively affects the achievement of the desired results of internet marketing campaigns, which have become an effective solution to increase the market share of potential customers and the Connection between them to improve the brand and existing customers by providing channels Fast and effective communication with the customers of your company or company and delivery of distinctive content that offers the opportunity to increase customer confidence in you as an expert in your field of activity who answers their common questions and answers inquiries.
Benefits of social media marketing
In the past, all companies and commercial projects have struggled to appear in commercials on TV or radio stations, as well as in commercials for well-known newspapers and magazines, incurring high marketing costs that may not bring the desired results. These marketing and advertising campaigns target all categories of customers, regardless of whether those categories have an interest in the various services and solutions your business offers.
Internet marketing offers the possibility of addressing all the problems of traditional marketing solutions through low-cost marketing channels and offers the possibility of precisely targeting specific categories of customers based on data and personal characteristics (geographical location - age group - gender - profession - interests ) to through different Marketing solutions to achieve a better return on marketing investments, including:
Your target audience is the most important factor in choosing the right solutions and effective Internet marketing channels, whether it's using search engines, which handle more than 5.6 billion searches every day, or trying to open up the search results pages to potential customers to be managed based on the configuration of websites for search engines (SEO) or via networks The various social networks in which more than half of the world's population is active every day.
There are many benefits of marketing through social media, the main ones being:
- Increasing brand awareness through unique content that contributes to increased engagement
- Improving customer service levels through various face-to-face communication channels
- Increase customer trust and loyalty with public positive reviews on social media accounts
- Carrying out the work of developing advertising campaigns by making performance statistics on social networking sites
Now you can appreciate the face of the benefits of different internet marketing solutions, especially marketing through social media, and this will not be the end of the article, but we will explain step by step how to start marketing in in the next few paragraphs social media and achieve the desired goals behind those marketing campaigns.
Developing marketing through social media
Existing only on social media and without a predetermined strategy is the biggest mistake institutions and commercial activities make when it comes to getting positive benefits from marketing on social media and it becomes a sheer waste of time, effort and marketing and advertising costs, whether through an e-marketing team specialized in social media. Or you hire an agency specializing in social media marketing solutions without defining and agreeing on the parameters of your corporate marketing strategy.
What are the desired goals of social media marketing campaigns? What are the target groups? Which social networks are best for targeting your potential customers? What types of content are good for increasing engagement? What are the most appropriate performance evaluation criteria to analyze the success of social media marketing? Do you have enough experience to start with an in-house work team or will you resort to an outside company specializing in internet marketing solutions?… All of these questions need to be answered through a specific marketing strategy before moving on to another continuing step.
Define social media marketing goals
Without concrete goals, you cannot judge whether marketing campaigns via social media have been successful or not. The goals differ depending on the type of project or business, the customer target group and the number of social media sites chosen to engage potential customers.
Among the top social media marketing objectives through which to analyze the ROI of marketing campaigns:
- Increased brand awareness by increasing the number of followers on social media and increasing engagement with published content
- arrive for large number of customers
- Increase sales by attracting the largest number of potential customers (Revenue Generation)
- Increase customers' trust in the company with useful content and positive reviews (reputation improvement)
- Improving the level of customer service through faster face-to-face communication through the different communication channels available
- As previously mentioned, the goals behind social media marketing campaigns can vary based on a variety of factors, but remain an indispensable cornerstone of marketing strategy.
Choosing the right social network analysis
Whether you have an in-house marketing team with experience in social media marketing or you have outsourced this task to a professional marketing agency, being present on all social media would not be a wise and efficient move, regardless of whether you target your audience achieve or not is present.
Social networks differ in terms of the type of active audience, the type of content most appropriate and the communication solutions available, so you need to develop different content for each network and choose a specific language and style of communication that goes with each social Networking site fits and does not achieve the desired results by distraction and does not focus on a specific number of social networks where you observe the greatest activity for potential customers with effective advertising solutions and communication channels related to the distinctive content, services or products of your company.
The main social networks suitable for marketing activities and commercial projects:
LinkedIn: The most suitable marketing network for services, products and solutions for other companies
Facebook : Regardless of the target customers, you are present on Facebook, which offers cost-effective and result-oriented advertising solutions
Twitter: The most suitable platform for tracking customer reviews and feedback on products and services
Instagram: Marketing with visual content (photos - short video) gets more engagement on Instagram than on any other platform.
YouTube: YouTube allows you to post a video that explains how products and services work, and tips for increasing customer loyalty and trust
Snapchat: The most suitable platform to address the modern age groups (the generation of the new millennium) through distinctive visual content that ensures a better engagement rate
The advantages of marketing through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram are many, but the most important thing is that the platform fits the content prepared for marketing campaigns and testifies to the presence and activity of potential customers.
Content Development and Release Schedule
The lack of a distinctive and interactive content development plan will cause social media projects and commercial activities efforts to fail, as accounts and pages that post dull duplicate content will be ignored, or worse, the content source will be publicly criticized. that negatively affect the reputation of institutions and commercial activities and their relationship with customers.
The content development plan begins after determining the most appropriate social media platforms for your business by determining the types of content that will achieve the desired engagement rate on each platform. The main types of social media marketing content are:
- Short text content (less than 4 lines)
- Long text content (more than one paragraph)
- graphic designs
- infographic
- Video (moving graphics - live broadcast - instructional video)
- Panoramic images (360 degrees)
- Audience questions and interactive polls
- Share useful content
- competitions
The next step is to set a well thought out content release schedule based on the days and times when there is more activity and interaction from the target customers through the delay statistics available on various social media sites and the Track interaction rate regularly. where the content display schedule can be changed based on popular events (trends). It may require creating specialized content to drive better engagement and focus on the types of content that are popular with your target customers.
Coordination of all marketing campaigns and channels
marketing campaign plan, including social media marketing, should coincide with channel marketing campaigns and other marketing solutions on schedule, in addition to the products or services being promoted, as intensifying marketing efforts on different platforms will help achieve goals desired and motivate potential customers to do the desired reactions.
When a potential customer encounters a problem or has a specific question and goes to search engines and finds your website in the first results with featured content that answers their questions and inquiries, then they find a post from your Facebook business page saying the same, the problem is discussed and multiple solutions offered will increase their confidence in Your project or business and motivates it to interact and communicate with you through multiple social media channels such as Facebook Messenger for Business or Twitter DM.
Choosing solutions for paid advertising campaigns on social media
Social media offers premium advertising solutions in terms of cost, targeting and performance evaluation criteria (insights), as well as the ability to pause, make adjustments, and resume paid advertising campaigns.
A paid advertising campaign is the fastest growing option when it comes to any of the following situations:
- And increase brand awareness
- Reach as many potential customers as possible
- Increase traffic to your website
- Increase engagement with published content
- Access to the most downloads of your official mobile app
- Increase viewership of visual content (video)
- Get the data of as many potential customers as possible
- Increase the rate of communication with potential customers through personal messages
- Increase the number of required conversions (purchase and subscription of services) from your website
- Guide customers to your store locations
After you have chosen the purpose and main objective of the advertising campaign on social networking sites, the important thing is to choose the most appropriate platforms for these advertising campaigns, as you will launch your next advertising campaign on social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or YouTube) can start. If the platform sees the presence and activity of potential customers and is commensurate with the budget of the advertising campaign, in addition to the ability to create distinctive content that complies with the rules and requirements of advertising on Facebook or other social networking sites.
Selection criteria for the analysis and evaluation of performance
As mentioned earlier, performance evaluation metrics are necessary when developing a social media marketing strategy because focusing on the number of followers on social networking sites for your business or business accounts is a fallacious metric that you should not rely on when evaluating success should from marketing campaigns.
The criteria used to evaluate the selected performance must match the specific objectives of the marketing campaigns:
- Increase brand awareness: Focus on the reach and engagement criteria for content published on social media accounts.
- Reach the largest possible number of prospects: Focus on limiting the number of prospects contacted via social media.
- Increase website visits and sales: Google Analytics allows you to determine the source of website visits from search engines, social media or other websites
- The success of paid advertising campaigns: Social media platforms provide performance statistics and analytics for paid advertising campaigns like Facebook Ads Manager to determine the percentage and amount of return on advertising and marketing expenses
Appropriate evaluation and performance analysis criteria will vary depending on the type of marketing campaign (free or paid), the target audience, the platform chosen for the marketing campaign, and the key objectives desired.
best social media marketing tools
If you decide to rely on an internal e-marketing team in your company, there are many free and paid tools that will help develop the performance level of the work team responsible for managing your social media accounts, and the most important of these tools are :
Social media tools , social marketing campaign , Free social media tools , Digital marketing tools , Media tools , Best free social media management tools , Social media marketing wikipedia , social influencer marketing platform.
