Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of Internet marketing (unpaid efforts) that utilizes social networking websites as a marketing tool. The goal of SMM is to produce content that users will share with their social network to help.
SMM is a lot like socializing in your hometown. You join groups, clubs and organizations based on your interests. The number of online communities is mind-boggling. The main problem with social media marketing from a business perspective is that it can be incredibly time-consuming. Social media marketing is not a one-shot affair; they need to be nurtured over time. Nothing looks worse than a social media page that hasn’t had a new post in 6 months.
The Goals of SMM
- Drive Traffic to your Website
- Broaden Customer Reach
- Develop Relationships
- Increase Your Brand Presence
- Provide Basic SEO
Always keep in mind what will keep your target interested when creating content for your social networks. People generally tend to gravitate towards posts or pieces that they identify with, so knowing your target audience well will help. In addition, intriguing graphics and design are another way to really draw the crowd in. Back that up with killer content, and you’ll have consumers sold.
Social Media Advertising
Social media advertising is a term used to describe online advertising (paid efforts) that focus on social networking sites. One of the major benefits of advertising on a social networking site (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) is that advertisers can take advantage of the users demographic information and target their ads appropriately.
Social media advertising combines current targeting options (like geo-targeting, behavioural targeting, socio-psychographic targeting, etc.), to make detailed target group identification possible. With social media advertising, advertisements are distributed to users based on information gathered from target group profiles.
Why Should You Consider Doing Social Media Advertising?
Generate Leads
The goal of all paid advertising should be to generate leads. Each social media post created should be connected to a landing page and the landing page should include a call to action. The link to the landing page that includes a call to action will maximize the effectiveness of the campaign. It’ll also allow you the ability to monitor the effectiveness of the campaign.
Increase Your Visibility
Promoting posts on Facebook is a great way of increasing the visibility of your content. Your post will appear nearer to the top and in more people’s News Feeds than if it wasn’t promoted. Increase Brand Awareness Customer Loyalty – When you create a Facebook page for your business and then promote it through Facebook advertising to accumulate more “likes”, you increase brand awareness.
Reach an Engaged Audience
Social media users tend to be highly engaged. Because people visit social networking sites several times per day and spend a lot of time on them, ads on social networks are more likely to be seen, clicked and shared.
Target Specific Audiences
Users on social media sites tend to divulge a lot of personal information in their profiles. Businesses can use that information to target users based on specific criteria, including their geographic location, personal interests, gender, and age. On Facebook, advertisers can even have their ads placed on pages that mention specific keywords.
Increase Brand Awareness Customer Loyalty
When you create a Facebook page for your business and then promote it through Facebook advertising to accumulate more “likes”, you increase brand awareness. Facebook fan pages help to increase customer loyalty because they give you the opportunity to interact directly with your customers, which keeps your business at the forefront of their minds and makes you seem more approachable.
Test Drive Promotions
Advertising on social networks is cost-effective because you only target people who are interested in your products and services, you’re only charged when someone clicks on your ad, and you’re only paying for clicks from people who are ready to buy. It’s also incredibly cheap to run tests and determine which ads work best and which ads need tweaking, so you don’t waste your advertising dollars on campaigns that aren’t performing up to par.
Increase Flexibility
The length of the ad descriptions that Facebook and other social networks allow are longer than those offered by Google Adwords. You have the option to use images in your ads, which helps to attract more attention to them. You’re also able to stop and start campaigns at will, something that’s next to impossible to do with conventional advertising campaigns.
Source: Obelis Media