Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing is the process of using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, to generate traffic and promote your business, brand, products or services. Social media marketing is one facet of Online Marketing that businesses can leverage from, in order to reach and engage with their customers as well as tap into prospects.
In the recent past, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others, have not only become popular, but are now a source of news and entertainment for the masses. According to Statista.com, as of the first quarter of 2017, Facebook had 1.94 billion monthly active users. These numbers are huge and can’t be ignored if you’re a company that is looking to grow your business and reach your targeted audience.
63% of Facebook and Twitter users say each platform serves as a source for news about events and issues outside the realm of friends and family. (Pew Research Center, 2015)
Benefits of Social Media Marketing
One of the biggest benefits of social media marketing is the ability to reach the masses while being able to promote your business to your target market. As indicated above, Facebook alone has over 1.9 billion active users. HubSpot reported in 2016, that “76% of people use their Facebook feed to find interesting content.“
By using relevant social media platforms, you can gain brand recognition by creating quality content and sharing it on social media networks. This can help increase your company’s visibility. Social media sites are a great place for businesses to build and maintain brand and customer loyalty and trust, thereby increasing credibility. One way of achieving this is by consistently sharing valuable content and providing exclusive incentives to customers and prospects.
Implementing and maintaining a social media strategy can help boost your company’s overall web presence via search engines. By consistently creating quality content and sharing it over your social networks, you create social shares and back-links. This is good for organic search engine optimization (SEO).
Also, if you are consistently sharing valuable content, loyal customers are bound to share your posts and this can present an opportunity to go viral for free. If done correctly, social media marketing can help boost conversions. I’ve barely scratched the surface in terms of the benefits of using social media marketing in promoting your business. But, as you can see, these benefits alone can greatly improve your overall marketing strategy and help increase sales.
72% of adult internet users use Facebook. (Pew Research Center, 2015)
Social Media Marketing Tools
Implementing a social media marketing strategy is a must, but it can be daunting when getting started. For one, there are so many social media networks. Just creating social media accounts in order to have a social media presence won’t cut it. It’s important to take the time to determine which social media networks are right for your business.
Another important aspect of implementing and maintaining a social media marketing strategy involves using the right tools to help automate the process. Maintaining social network accounts and consistently finding and posting relevant and high quality content can be very time-consuming.
Therefore it’s important to plan things out in advance and measure results on a regular basis. For example, I use SociHub to automate my social media network accounts. “Nearly 70% of businesses are using a marketing automation platform or are currently implementing one.” (Aberdeen, 2014). Feel free to reach out to me if you need help with social media marketing. Continue to read and find out how you can leverage Video Marketing and online marketing, to effectively promote your business online.
90% of all marketers indicated that their social media efforts have generated more exposure for their businesses. (Social Media Examiner, 2015)
