WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?
Social media is the way of interactions among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. People are using social media for a number of purposes. The four main uses of social media form the acronym SLIM: sharing, learning, interacting, and marketing. Today we are going to focus on the Marketing aspect of things.
TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA
- Social Networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.
- Media Sharing Networks – Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube.
- Discussion Forums – Reddit, Quora, Digg.
- Bookmarking & Content Curation Networks – Pinterest, Flipboard.
- Consumer Review Networks – Yelp, Zomato, TripAdvisor.
Each business can either use all the platforms but normally, each platform has its own benefits and each business works better with a certain platform depending on the service or product.
HOW TO ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
- Set Your GOAL
You need to understand what you want to achieve from your social media strategy before it can be effective. Defining clear goals for your social media marketing helps you identify the key areas you need to focus on to make it effective. From target market, posting schedules and expected conversion rates.
- Gather Data
Today’s social media trends rely on being relatable. To understand what your audience relates to, you’ll need to research. You need to understand the audience you want to engage with, look up other companies that are in the same field and see how their audience behaves, what kind of content they respond to. When you have created accounts, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram’s integrated tools can also be very helpful in helping you manage your audience. There is information on audience behaviour, engagement, posts performance, demographics which can help you align and readjust your strategy to make it more effective. For websites, Google Analytics also performs this same function of taking notice of when your audience is most active, the posts they engage with, and their demographics.
- Figure Out How Your Audience Spends Their Time Online
You do not have to have a presence on every social media platform. The best social media advertising tip is to focus on where most of your audience spends their time online taking into consideration your service and products too. Some products or services require a lot of visual effort to sell, platforms like Instagram and Pinterest will be most applicable. Facebook and LinkedIn are better for informational content, and YouTube is ideal for videos. Consider the kind of content that best serves both your audience’s interests and your business
- Optimize Your Profile
A fully filled out profile can easily kick start your social media presence. A profile is the quickest and easiest way to know what the business is about. A window to the company. An easy way to start a hashtag is to use your payoff line as a hashtag that way it can stick in your audience’s mind and it makes it popular and include it in your bio so customers can find content relevant to your brand. You should also:
- Fill out all your information.
- Follow relevant accounts.
- Understand which hashtags are relevant to your business and which aren’t.
- Create Engaging Content
Creating high-quality content is more important than obsessing over the exact time to post. Upload eye-catching and branded images. This creates familiarity in your posts, your audience without looking too much into the picture can easily tell that that picture belongs to company X. In a research according to Good Firms, 87.4% of people prefer to see photos on social media. In addition to highly relevant, funny, and trending pictures and videos are perfect for interactive content.
- Boost Interaction
Building relationships, not just relationships but a two-way relationship with your audience is one of the major benefits that come with social media. When relationships are two-way there is interaction and most importantly feedback which helps you shape up your business. Interaction on your content is also a positive sign to social media algorithms, which can help your posts get discovered organically. A tip on increasing engagement and gaining followers is to do a giveaway, a quiz, or a poll. People love freebies and also love the fact that they are contributing something to the brand ( polls on what colour to go with painting the new office walls etc)This call to action cleverly prompts users to comment thereby positively affecting the engagement. Encourage your audience to tag you and you must repost. This helps in increasing engagement and makes the brand more relatable.
- Understand Your Advertising Options
Have a dense understanding of what works organically on your desired social media platform or platforms. As much as it is good to grow an audience organically, at some point you will need to invest in paid advertising options to have a wider reach.
BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
- Increased exposure
- Increased traffic
- Generated Leads
- Improved sales
- Increased business partnerships
- Readily available information on market insight