A Quick Guide to Start Social Media Marketing for Dummies
Social media is not just media! It is
a combo of media, networking, and business. Not anymore a simple channel to
contact, text, or call your friends or an online news channel to know what’s
going in who’s life. It has become a part of our personal and professional
life, making it vital for companies to share a part of their digital marketing
focus on these channels.
Social media marketing companies can create an impactful and valuable
marketing strategy within your budget to shout out your brand name to the
online world.
Effectiveness of Social Media Marketing in 2021
Around 56.8% of the world’s population
uses social media, which counts to approx. 4.48 billion people. An average
person spends 30 minutes of their life on social media, popularly Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This shows the potential of business and ROI
generation social media has.
Social media marketing consists of a significant
portion of a company’s digital marketing budget. A medium-size B2B company
spends approx. 12-15% of your marketing budget on social media, and a B2C
company approx. 18-25% of their budget. This leads almost every company to generate
revenue via social media irrespective of organically or paid promotions.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing is all about
what you post, how you post, where you post, and when you post!
In simple terms, it is about using
the social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora,
etc., to promote your business and generate online revenue. Irrespective of the
industry you belong to, social media marketing for dummies involves creating,
posting, and sharing your posts at least thrice a week to begin with.
Before going deep into social media
marketing concepts, let us first have a glance at the 5 most used terms in
social media marketing to understand better:
1. Content – Content is anything and everything
that you post on social media! Content isn’t restricted to “Text” only. It can
be in the form of text, picture, video, audio, ebook, infographics, podcasts,
etc. Whichever style of content you select, make sure to provide authentic, engaging,
and valuable information. Publishing half-known/ wrong fact creates a negative
impact on your brand.
2. Context – Gary Vaynerchuk had rightly said,
“Content is king, but context is God.”
If you have an exciting quote but
insert it in a middle of a blog, it has high chance of being missed. Instead,
if you tweet it on Twitter with the blog URL or share it on Instagram with the
right hashtags, it will get engagements and bring traffic to your site too.
3. Hashtags – Coming to social media, we all know
what hashtags are. Fill up your snippet with 30 hashtags on Instagram as a
maximum of 30 hashtags is allowed, isn’t the right way. Using the right hashtag
brings the ball in your court, even if you use one or two tags. Remember, keep
a tab on the trending hashtags.
4. Engagements – Engagement is any interaction with
your post: view, like, comment, share, save. Even a view adds to impressions!
Keep a tab on the engagements with social media analytics tools or the
channel’s insights.
5. Shares – A share is counted when
someone shares your post with someone else over WhatsApp or shares it to their
Facebook wall, retweeting it on Twitter, reposting it on Instagram, or sharing
via Insta messages. When you get a share of your post, that’s the actual time
of celebration!
Know your customers (Customer Proforma)
Knowing your customers is the heart
of your social media marketing strategy. If you do not know who your customers
are, you will never be able to create a successful campaign and keep throwing
the dart in the dark! Conducting a customer analysis, social media marketing
specialists in Kolkata help you prepare a customer proforma by figuring out
the following:
1. Age
2. Gender
3. Location
4. Behavior
Core Strategies For Successful Marketing:
·
Decide Which Social Media Platform To Use: The first step to your social media
marketing strategy is selecting which social media platform your target
audience is on.
· Write An Impressive Bio: The first thing that people see on your channel is the bio.
If they aren’t impressed with it, 70% will go back from the home page. Make
sure to use your industry keyword in the bio.
· Share Valuable Content: Content is everywhere over the web. To pull people to your
site/ channel, you need to share exciting and engaging content in the form of
texts, pictures, videos, reels, etc.
· Make Videos With Subtitles: Adding a subtitle to the videos you post increases the
chances of being viewed. People often scroll through social media in the office
or on the way, without disturbing others or the boss getting to know they can
view videos with subtitles. Also, it helps you generate traffic breaking the
language barrier,.
· Find Influencers In Your Niche: Influencer marketing is a major part of social media marketing.
People follow influencers blindly, and when an influencer suggests your
product/ service or shares his/ her post using it, people get keen to try it.
· Decide When To Post: Do not just post randomly! Make a calendar of what to post and when to. Neither
spam your account with too many posts nor give a long break between two posts.
Posting on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, gets the maximum traffic on Instagram.
· Hold Giveaways & Contents: Keep your followers engaged and attract new followers with
attractive offers, holding giveaways, online events, and contents. Go for free
trials, limited-time offers, special codes, etc.
· Don’t Go For Paid Followers: Going for paid followers adds negative value to your brand
name. What’s the use of having 3k followers when only 10/15 engage with your
posts? This brings the customers to doubt your brand.
Top 7 Social Media Channels To Start With:
Being the heart of social media, Facebook is one of the most widely used social channels. There are people from the age of 13 to 60+ on FB, though the minimum registering age is 18.
Being the most loyal social media
platform to businessmen, FB allows corporates to create a business page, has a
FB Ads manager and business suite for the page owner to track every activity on
their page.
A Facebook marketing company in Kolkata will
handle your entire FB business suite by creating, sharing, listing posts, generating
leads, running ads, and bringing in followers for your brand.
Known as the social platform for the youth, Instagram has been generating the second maximum leads and conversions for B2C business houses. Hashtags are the King of Instagram.
Do not just blindly use all
high-ranking hashtags, this way you will lose it to brands. Make a balance of
1/2 top hashtags, 2/3 hashtags of the range 50k-80k, 2/3 of the range 20k-50k,
and make one special hashtag for your brand name.
The more lucrative your posts will
be, the more engagements you will get on Instagram. Instagram allows you to
share pictures, stories, reels of 60 seconds, and longer videos via IGTV.
YouTube
In the present world, speaking of
videos, YouTube is the first word that comes to our mind. Anything anyone wants
to learn or see, one can find it on YouTube. It is one of the most widely used
platforms by the entertainment industry.
Sharing short explanatory videos on
YouTube helps you gain traffic to your site, subscribers to your YouTube
channel, followers to your other social accounts.
If you are a dummy in social media
marketing, mastering YouTube will take time as it has a chain of audio and
video rules to be followed.
Twitter is all about speed! If you
are a slow and steady believer, then Twitter isn’t for you. To excel on
Twitter, you need to be resourceful, smart, and quick.
Resourceful to get the news asap,
smart to write it within 280 characters including the hashtag, and quick to
post it.
Though started as a job search
platform, LinkedIn has evolved as a social media marketing channel for B2B
business owners. People are on LinkedIn for business! So, the informal style of
writing won’t work over here.
Your LinkedIn post should be
informative with actual stats and figures. The length of the snippet isn’t a
factor on LinkedIn. It is a great network to expand your connections worldwide.
Yes, it is true that Pinterest is a
visual saving forum and not a marketing place. Still, many brands have grabbed
this opportunity by sharing attractive pictures and getting customers to their
site.
This is an impression-creating social
marketing strategy for dummies that will build their brand image.
Quora
Popularly known as a Question-Answer
platform, Quora is a trending marketing platform to popularize your brand
indirectly. Without any fancy marketing strategy, all you have to do is write
point-to-point clear answers on Quora.
Once the people start getting value
out of your answers, they will immediately follow you and visit your website
for more details.
The Final Takeaway
This form of marketing is essential
and beneficial for both dummies and successful companies to increase their
brand awareness. Equipped with the right tools, necessary knowledge, and
experience, c create an impactful
marketing strategy for dummies to build their space in the digital landscape.
For You: Every brand is unique! Experimentation is the best option to design your social media marketing strategy. Read, learn, experiment, try and then make your strategy.
Comments
Post a Comment