What is social media marketing?

 
Updated August 6th 2024/Social Media Marketing

Whatever your industry, social media is a powerful tool for connecting with your target audience, boosting your brand, building customer loyalty, and growing your income. This guide covers everything you need to understand about social media marketing, from its basics and strategies to implementation.

Social media is about more than just getting more clicks or reaching a bigger audience. It's about adding a personal touch to your business and fostering closer connections with your followers. Considering there are a whopping 4.8 billion active social media users, it's vital to be present on these platforms. This involves regularly sharing top-quality, positive content.

Understanding How People Make Purchase Decisions:

• A product
• A price
• A button to say “yes” or “no” to  purchase

 While it might seem simple, the reality is that customers prefer to avoid thinking about prices. Pricing typically stirs up negative emotions and discomfort. As a result, completely resolving this discomfort can be challenging, regardless of the quality of your sales or discounts. This shift has a significant impact on marketers today. Previously, marketers would craft advertisements centered around bargain prices.

Now, as an affiliate marketer or influencer, the focus has shifted towards engaging the reward centers of customers' minds. The more positively customers view your products or services, the less pricing discomfort will affect them. You can still effectively promote higher-priced items by framing them as truly rewarding customer experiences.

So, How can you ignite people's reward centers when they think about your brand or see your products?

One effective strategy for exciting people's reward circuits is 'associative recall.' This means creating positive associations between your brand, products, or services and customers' memories. The more positive memories they have of you, the more their reward centers light up. Consistently providing excellent, relevant content is a vital part of this strategy.

Understanding how to activate those reward centers in your audience will be your secret weapon to drive you toward success in social media marketing.

Resource: Brian Knutson, Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, and his team at Stanford University.

Essential Parts of a Strong Social Media Marketing Plan

A solid social media strategy is essential for maximizing social media marketing and increasing its chances of success.

This strategy should outline your goals, the tactics you'll use, and the metrics you'll track to measure performance. These tactics are your tools for success, helping you take control of your social media strategy. 

Here are the key elements of a successful social media strategy.

Audience Research: Deepen your understanding of your target audience by asking yourself which platforms they use, the kind of content they enjoy, and the influencers they follow. This knowledge will guide you in creating content that resonates with your audience and boosts engagement.

Brand Identity: When you post on social media and engage with your followers, consider how you want to portray your brand. Think about the messages you want to get across and the image you want to create.

Content Marketing: Content marketing is about leveraging content to expand your brand presence and captivate your audience on social media platforms—the more precise and more detailed your strategy, the higher the likelihood of success.

Analytics: Social media analytics gather and study data from your social platforms to measure performance and improve your strategy. Without it, you won’t know whether or not what you’re doing is working.

Ongoing Activity: Just like any other kind of marketing, social media marketing is something you have to keep working at. This includes regularly posting content, actively interacting with your audience, and continuously refining and optimizing your social media profiles to ensure effectiveness.

In addition to your social media strategy, it's essential to have a professional business website. This allows people who find your business through social media to visit your website for more information about your products or services. If you don't have a website, you can explore resources to learn how to design one. Alternatively, consider using a top website builder for a quick and cost-effective option.

Enhance your social media strategy with optimal methods.

To ensure your social media marketing strategy works, here are some key tips that work well. Top brands have tested these reliable practices, which can boost your small business or startup on social media.

Diversify Your Content

Offer diverse content alongside your usual posts to keep your audience interested. Mix things up with posts showcasing your products/services and establishing your industry expertise. Consider sharing a mix of how-to guides, quick tips, polls, questions, contests, announcements, and industry updates. Present your content in different formats like images, videos, live streams, and online stores.

Be Consistent

Each social media platform has its own voice and environment. However, your brand and identity must remain the same, regardless of where you post. If your brand is fun and trendy, for example, convey that message through your posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and any other platforms you utilize.

Engage in Conversations

Don’t overlook the importance of conversing with your audience. Engage with your audience by interacting with those interested in your content. Respond to likes, comments, and shares to keep the conversation flowing. Encourage discussions with polls, live sessions, and questions. Running contests and giveaways can also prompt interaction.

Content Creation Tools

Social media isn't just a marketing tool anymore; it's an integral part of our everyday lives. Managing your online content can take time and effort, as many platforms cater to different content types.

Thankfully, we now have some top social media marketing tools to help. These tools are a godsend for all types of businesses and marketing teams, whether you work as a social media manager, marketing consultant, or brand manager. 

To attract and retain a strong social media following, you must share impactful visuals such as photos, videos, infographics, and complementary text. If you don't have a graphic design team, affordable tools like Canva and Capcut with templates can help you create visuals quickly and inexpensively. These tools make social media content much more manageable.  

Use Hashtags

A hashtag is a word or keyword followed by the hash symbol used in social media posts to help users discover topics of interest. Incorporating hashtags in your posts can boost your brand's exposure. Let’s say you run a fitness business. Several examples of hashtags you might add to your posts include #fitnessmotivation, #workoutwednesday, and #getfit.

Use Analytics 

Keep up with the ever-changing world of social media by using analytics and tracking data to determine if your strategy is working. Although each social media platform has its own analytics, it's worth investing in a flexible tool to keep up with changes and bring together all platform data in one place. This way, you can keep an eye on clicks, comments, reach, engagement rate, impressions, shares, saves, video views, follower growth over time, reactions, and more.

Repurpose Content

Starting from scratch is unnecessary if you already have content related to your brand. It's totally okay to repurpose the content you already have. Repurposing existing content is a smart move. Consider showcasing customer reviews on Facebook or Instagram or sharing blog articles and press releases from your website.