Social Media Marketing Guide: Pillars, Successful Strategy and Pros & Cons
What is Social Media Marketing?
Building a brand, increasing sales, and driving traffic to a website are carried out through social media platforms (also part of digital marketing), where users can share information and build social networks. It was apparent to marketers that social media had marketing potential. Moreover, in a short time, it evolved from being a means of direct electronic information exchange to becoming a shopping platform and a critical tool for promoting products. Let's explore SMM here.
Pillars of Social Media Marketing
There are five essential pillars of social media marketing.
1. Overview of Critical Components
You should think carefully before you publish anything because a page full of haphazardly added images and content will only generate traffic if you have a strategy. Step back and consider the bigger picture when putting together a social media strategy. Create a mental image of what you want to accomplish. How do you plan to achieve your business objectives?
Social media platforms like (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, etc.) provide free and paid ways to reach the right people at the right time with those messages. Social media allows brands to learn more about their audience's personal, geographical, and demographic characteristics. In this way, organizations can customize their messaging and content to engage their audiences best. Lastly, a successful social media marketing program consists of five pillars.
2. Content Strategy
The first thing we recommend if you're thinking of publishing something on social media is to create a social media strategy. You may be wondering how to come up with a social strategy. The following questions will help you create a customer-centric strategy:
- Are there any goals you have in mind?
- Is there a social media platform that will assist you in reaching your goal?
- Which type of content will attract your target audience?
3. Audience Targeting
The concept of audience targeting refers to the process of grouping consumers according to their demographics, interests, behaviours, and intents. It's about reaching the right people at the right time with ads tailored to their interests or behaviours, such as purchase patterns.
The first step is to brainstorm your target demographics. What kind of customer are you looking for? By identifying their age, gender, education, occupation, income level, location, interests, and family status, you can be as specific as possible.
4. Engagement and Interaction
At the beginning of your business page, you may have a few followers who can interact with you through direct messages and comments. However, you may see your audience grow when you begin posting engaging content.
Your social media followers may start tagging you in their posts and commenting on your posts. Plus, monitoring your comments and direct messages is a great way to maintain a relationship with your audience. Try to resolve their issues, and appreciate them if they provide positive feedback or compliments about your brand or product.
5. Analytics and Measurement
Analyzing your social media campaign's performance can help you determine whether it is succeeding. Whether your goal is sales, traffic, or engagement, always aim to increase those steadily.
To make your marketing campaigns more effective, you should monitor their performance as you progress toward publication or social media engagement. Has your growth progressed or regressed since the last quarterly report? How often are you being tagged or mentioned in positive or negative comments if you are an e-commerce brand?
The applications have all the primary social media analytics and tools available, so you can easily access them. Using social media analytics tools is the best way to understand inclusive data.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages:
1. Increased Brand Visibility
Over a billion people use social media daily. Sharing one post can exponentially increase a brand's exposure. One of the most important benefits of social media marketing is the increased visibility your brand receives. With the help of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can expand your audience and increase your brand's recognition.
2. Enhanced Customer Engagement
The goal of social media marketing for organizations is more than just to reach customers. It's also to interact with them. Doing this lets you create one-to-one relationships with your customers and improve customer service.
3. Targeted Advertising
Social ads are one of the most popular aspects of social media. Once you are ready to commit capital to social media, you can spread awareness about your brand through social media ads. You can reach the most significant number of users by displaying ads to your targeted audience.
Disadvantages:
1. Negative Feedback
Among the disadvantages of social media marketing is that your audience may give you negative feedback. Poor experiences with your brand can allow people to share their bad experiences with others. The negative feedback may hurt your business the next time someone checks out your product.
2. Algorithm Changes
Content visibility on social media can be affected by various factors, such as frequent algorithm changes.
3. Time-Consuming
Social media campaigns require a lot of time and effort to be successful. Besides filling a calendar with new content, marketing teams must also respond to inquiries constantly. Consequently, small marketing teams may have difficulty utilizing social media marketing's full potential.
Crafting Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
Here are the steps that can help you develop a strategy for your SMM campaign:
1. Define Goals and Objectives
When developing a social media strategy, it is essential to begin with clearly defined objectives. You must make sure that your goals are specific, quantifiable, achievable, meaningful, and time-bound if you want them to guide your strategy.
2. Common Objectives include:
- Awareness of the brand.
- Increasing website traffic.
- Convert leads into sales.
- Increasing customer engagement.
- Assist with sales.
3. Know Your Audience
Understanding your target audience is imperative. Find out your target market's demographics, interests, lifestyles, and pain points. Building buyer personas can significantly benefit you. Knowing your audience better will allow you to create relevant and engaging content for them.
4. Choose the Right Platforms
There are different social media platforms for different purposes. Platforms should be chosen based on your audience and your objectives. Here are the primary platforms:
- Instagram: Suitable for visual content and attracting teenage audiences.
- Facebook: Ideal for businesses in all sectors, especially B2C.
- Twitter: The best place to get updates and interact in real-time.
- LinkedIn: Designed for business-to-business networking.
- Pinterest: Great for visual content and DIY projects.
5. Create Engaging Content
Brands should identify their goals, audiences, and competitive landscapes to determine the type(s) of content they need to create. Content that engages people comes in different formats and media. However, businesses need to publish content frequently and consistently to develop a loyal following.
6. Implement a Posting Schedule
If you know when your audience is active and when to share your posts, you can reach more people. If you post on social media every time content goes live, you're missing out on a massive opportunity to optimize your reach.
7. Monitor and Analyze Performance
It is also imperative to measure what works and what does not work in your social media marketing programs to ensure your strategy is successful. Observe the following:
- The most engaging posts.
- Customers who keep buying.
- Ads with the best return on investment.
Conclusion
Social media is the best way to create brand awareness. When you develop a comprehensive social media strategy, you know your brand will become more visible. Overall, implementing an effective social media marketing strategy today can increase your followers, improve engagement, and boost conversions.