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The majority of today’s businesses are faced with incredibly fierce competition, and mastering social media marketing is one of the best ways to stand out. Building an identity for your brand and creating a sense of community through social channels is one of the best things you can do for your business. However, creating and managing a successful strategy can seem too complex, and that is why we prepared a detailed guide that will help you understand the essence of social media marketing.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing refers to the process where businesses create social media content in order to promote their products and services, drive traffic to their online stores, and establish communities with their target audience.
Due to the fact that new platforms and features emerge almost daily, the complexity and span of social media marketing are constantly evolving. However, the basics remain the same - social media marketing is always about finding your target audience on the platforms they naturally visit and getting them to interact with your brand.
The Key Benefits of Social Media Marketing
First and foremost, social media is a unique way to increase brand awareness. Social channels gather a large number of people, and if you’re not present, you’re missing out on the chance to reach thousands or even millions of prospects. And once you attract the right audiences, you will be able to generate leads and boost conversions, which is another huge benefit.
Moreover, the moment you start connecting and engaging with your followers, you will get a chance to build lasting relationships between them and your brand. And as you do that, you should consider keeping an eye on your competitors and learning from their strategies. No other marketing channel can reveal as much about the efforts of your rivals as social media.
The Leading Platforms to Consider
Let’s go over some of the most popular social media channels you can benefit from:
Facebook
With around 1.9 billion active users scattered across the world, Facebook is still the leading social media platform out there. Ever since it was launched in 2004, Facebook has been an invaluable tool for all sorts of B2C businesses. As for its marketing potential, Facebook offers a variety of advanced advertising tools, as well as numerous organic opportunities. One of the main benefits of the platform lies in its potential to build brand awareness. When it comes to the audience, Facebook gathers an even spread of Millenials and Generation X.
Instagram
Instagram is a platform that attracts mostly millennials, and its audience recently grew to reach 1 billion monthly active users. Even though it was launched only 12 years ago, its popularity skyrocketed, and it became one of the best platforms for B2C marketing. When it comes to sharing visually appealing content, there is no other platform that can compete with Instagram. And as far as businesses are concerned, they can benefit from some pretty advanced e-commerce tools. Nowadays, individuals can discover brands, explore their services and products, and complete a purchase without even leaving the app.
TikTok
TikTok is now the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to short-form videos. The platform exploded in popularity in 2020, and nowadays it attracts 1 billion active monthly global users. TikTok is particularly loved by Generation Z, followed directly by Millenials. As for the industry impact, there is success in both B2B and B2C relationships. TikTok is currently one of the best channels for businesses looking to work on community building, and today’s marketers rank it second, right behind YouTube.
Twitter
As opposed to Instagram and TikTok, where the focus is on different types of visuals, Twitter is all about words. And as such, it gathers around 211 million active users from all corners of the world on a daily basis. The audience is mostly comprised of millennials, and the impact of the platform is primarily efficient when it comes to B2B and B2C marketing. In the early days of Twitter, you only remember 140-character Tweets, but the platform known as Twitter Communities, an audio tool called Twitter Spaces, and a tool named Twitter Moments, which you can use to share engaging content with your followers.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is considered Facebook’s professional counterpart, and it may be the only social media platform where the audience is clearly defined. It gathers working professionals who are interested in networking and finding new business opportunities. LinkedIn’s audience is comprised of around 774 million active users, and the platform is popular among millennials, baby boomers, and Generation X. As such, it is a perfect platform for B2B companies to build industry-specific communities by identifying key decision-makers.
How To Use the Power of Social Media
Check out the following tips that will help you use the impact of social media channels to your advantage:
Define Your Audience
Before you start working on a social media marketing strategy, you need to determine who your buyers are in order to be able to target their interests and needs. The best way to do this is to think about the types of individuals that you’re trying to reach and ways you can classify them as a group. Defining the ideal buyer personas will also help you decide on the content you should publish.
Build a Human-Like Presence
A lot of businesses get stuck in a robotic, copy-and-paste approach when it comes to their social media strategies, even though followers usually seek a natural, human approach. That is why you should make sure your comments and social captions feel like they’ve actually been written by a real person and not a robot. Adding a human touch to your posts is an easy way to relate to your audience and build meaningful relationships.
Pick the Platforms to Market On
Choosing the right platforms is at the core of your social media marketing efforts. Since there is no clear right or wrong when it comes to this decision, you need to follow the needs of your target audience and spot the channels where they spend most of their time. You want to be where your potential customers are today, and where they are likely to be tomorrow.
Establish Your Main Metrics and KPIs
No matter what your goals are and what industry you belong to, all your social strategies should be data-driven. That is why you need to focus on the social media metrics that matter most to your business. Some of the most commonly used metrics and KPIs revolve around reach, engagement, hashtag performance, organic and paid likes, as well as the overall sentiment of your audiences.
Create Engaging Content
As you already know, all your competitors are also active on social media, and in order to stay ahead of them, you need to continuously create unique and engaging content. And before you can do that, you need to know what your audience likes. Next, consider the type of content shared by other brands, as well as current social media trends.
Social media platforms have taken the world by storm, and not leveraging their powers will leave you behind all other businesses that have already built a presence on relevant channels. Whether you’re new to the world of social media or you’ve already taken some initial steps, the information provided in this guide will help you build a powerful strategy geared toward growth.
