The Importance of Social Media Marketing
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is the way a business or personal brand promotes their products and services by utilizing social media platforms to advertise and gain helpful insight on an online audience.
Social Media Marketing for Business
Social media marketing can be an extremely effective tool for businesses both big and small. Marketing in itself is a way to increase your brand awareness, and has been around since humans could read and write.
With the help of the internet, marketing has had a whole new frontier for expansion. When marketing is done with the help of social media channels, a business is able to funnel their marketing efforts directly to the hand of any audience they choose.
Social media marketing is an effective way for businesses to share content aimed with purpose to help build their brand, convert sales, increase their customer base, and engage with an audience to help provide a simple form of customer service while gaining helpful insight.
- Establish your brand
- Raise brand awareness
- Gain traffic to your website
- Convert sales
- Connect with your audience
- Improve your online search results
- Get more reviews
- Get better reviews
- Protect your brand’s reputation
Personal Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing for personal brands is much like business marketing, but instead of promoting products and services on a social network, you’re promoting your knowledge, skills and assets.
Personal branding is especially beneficial for young professionals entering the workforce, industry professionals looking to expand their reach, and entrepreneurs building a personal client base.
By promoting your brand on social media in an effective and consistent way, you build trustworthiness and credibility towards your brand, and build lasting relationships with those who could open the door to your next opportunity.
If you are looking to improve your chances of expanding your reach as an entrepreneur, landing your next job, getting accepted into your dream college, getting recognized for a promotion, or even just hoping to network more effectively - personal social media management is for you.
- Improve your online reputation
- Cleanup your online search results
- Highlight your work and talents
- Define and build trust in your personal brand
- Gain traffic to your personal website
- Share your knowledge
- Network more efficiently
Social Media Marketing in 4 Simple Steps
Sharing online, whether for a business or a personal brand, allows you to remain in control of your online presence. Building a personal image with the use of social media allows you to build an online brand and persona that is engaging, insightful and personable.
Social media marketing is much more than just your occasional post, like and tweet. When done correctly with a timeline of goals, brands have the ability to completely rebuild and strengthen their online identity for years to come.
Taking the time to do social media marketing correctly and with intention is what will set your brand apart from competition, and align it on course to success.
1 - Define Your Brand
The first step to any type of social media marketing plan is defining the brand itself. Brands need a concrete direction of interest. Begin by asking yourself questions like, “what problems can my brand help to solve,” “what type of people am I trying to connect with,” and “what is going to set my brand apart from the rest?”
By developing an interesting and unique brand, you’re able to take the first step towards using that knowledge to help develop your online marketing plan.
2 - Outline Your Strategy
The next step is to outline your social media marketing strategy. Developing a strategy is all about what type of goals you’re trying to achieve based on business/brand objectives. By outlining your objectives, you’re able to better understand what type of content to create, and where to share it with your target audience.
Image courtesy of Hootsuite
Based on those goals and objectives, different social media networks can be utilized to help meet them. Not every social media platform is built equally, and choosing wisely could help save you time, effort and money.
3 - Engage with Your Audience
Social media posts are made to be just that, social. Creating engaging content is just as important as publishing the content itself. Just like any other area of online marketing, social media marketing works best when combined with engaging interaction.
Posting interesting and insightful content consistently can help offer credibility to your brand, and catch the eye of your next customer or investor in the meantime. Posting engaging content that is in line with your brand will help drive your audience to other online resources like your website or other publications to help move your target.
4 - Review Your Analytics
No marketing plan is complete without tracking the data behind your efforts. Analytics help provide valuable insight on how well your content is performing, where it’s performing best, and what type of actions people are taking in connection to it.
Mostly every online platform has the ability to offer you analytics. From social media platforms to Google itself, analytics tools offer valuable knowledge that can help you improve your marketing practices and take your yet another step further towards success.
Once you know what is performing best and where, paid promotions like Facebook Ads are a surefire way to help get your content in front of the right people.
Why is Social Media Important for Small Business
The success of small businesses lies in the hands of the consumers. As a small business owner, you will always be looking for a way to help your business meet the right people. Sharing your business’s brand consistently with your target audience on social media helps get your products and services in front of potential customers day after day.
Believe it or not, small businesses actually have the advantage over larger corporations when it comes to social media marketing. At the end of the day, successful marketing all comes down to engagement.
How Does Small Business Advertising Work?
Small businesses often have a smaller, more specified customer and client base compared to larger corporations. Using that to your advantage helps small business owners hone in on their target audience effectively and engage with them directly.
Let’s use Walmart as our big business example, and an Etsy shop as our small business example. If Walmart was a fisherman set out at sea, he would have access to an endless array of fish. However, the sea is so vast and wide open, it’s hard to see exactly what they need to catch and where. All the different fish need different bait, and most of the fish aren’t even hungry. You can see why it would be a time consuming, frustrating process to fish like this.
Now, let’s take a look at the other fisherman, Etsy. Etsy has a hidden fishing spot that only a few people know about. They all like a certain type of bait, and always return to the same spot. Etsy always knows that when a line is cast with the right conditions, a fish will take the bait.
Social media marketing is a small business’s way of fishing at that prime fishing spot. The key is to find a spot relevant to what type of fish your business requires, and what type of bait you have access to. Marketing with a strategy is a way to cast your line, and pull back a profit every time.
Professional Social Media Management
Thanks to the ever increasing importance of online reviews and use of social media, consumers have been put on the forefront of determining the success of a business.
By utilizing the advantages that social media marketing offers, businesses and brand leaders have the ability to build, restore and protect their online reputation, brand, image and presence long term.
Working with a professional social media marketing manager allows a business or individual to have reassurance knowing their online image is in the hands of someone with their best interests in mind. Working one-on-one with a designated professional allows you to gain confidence by establishing a timeline of events and goals that can provide measurable success in marketing efforts.
Social Media Marketing Management with Brand911
Here at Brand911 we understand the importance of maintaining an online presence that reflects your best assets, knowledge and skills. By creating a plan of action based on your own personal goals and objectives, a strategy can be created that will put you on a fast track to success. Let’s get started today with a free consultation!
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