Social media marketing is one of the most subtle forms of digital marketing. This is because it is easy to market to people in a comfortable environment. A majority of people on social media want to be entertained, if your content is engaging enough to entertain them, you can easily market your product or service to them.
Social media marketing has become wholly integrated into all the different channels and aspects of social media. Incase you didn’t already know, boundless opportunities exist in social media platforms. It is also a great way to build trust with your audience because they can easily view your profile, read reviews and even engage with you if necessary. So let’s take it from the top, what is social media marketing and is it really as vital in 2022 as everyone makes it out to be?
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that makes use of social media platforms to connect with a target audience and sell their products and services. The beauty of social media marketing is that sometimes it is so subtle that you are not even aware that you’re being marketed to.
Since social media is a platform that comprises entertainment so if you are giving any form of entertainment to the audience, it is easier for them to connect with your brand. The social media marketing space has evolved in the last few years and it is still evolving. This is a space where a lot of traffic can be generated back to your website because of the number of people who are invested in social media.
There are also numerous platforms to choose from which makes it a much broader choice of marketing than most types of digital marketing.
When marketing on social media platforms, you have to be extremely particular about curating engaging and compelling contents because there are thousands of contents that your target audience naturally see on a consistent basis and it can be easy to have to sift through on social media platforms.
If yours isn’t engaging enough, you will not achieve the results you seek to achieve. You have to be ready to wow your target audience as well as interact with them on a consistent basis.
How does social media marketing work?
When done right Social Media Marketing works really well for a business because research shows people are most likely to buy a product after seeing it on their social media feed.
As a matter of fact, data from Fatbit Technology back in 2017 shows that 75 percent of people actually buy a product after seeing it on their social media feeds and 57 percent will buy from a brand they already follow on social media.
This is how social media marketing works;
People relate more with authentic contents than salesmanship
Who loves being advertised to? Except it’s a super compelling and engaging advert, there are not a lot of people who would sit and watch an ad till the end. How many times have you frowned at an advert on TV when watching your favorite show? How many times have you skipped Ads impatiently on YouTube? How many adverts have you scrolled past quickly online? I’m guessing, a lot. Don’t feel guilty, it is completely normal.
This is why naturally, social media is one of the best places to advertise your products and services. You are able to sell to people who already have their guards down and are not searching for anything specific. A space where people have their guards down is a comfortable space and they are most likely going to be more receptive to being sold to especially if your Ad content is relevant and engaging.
You can come to people first through creating contents that they love. You can then move on to establish some semblance of credibility and then sell to them. That way, it looks more intimate and less formal because they already have a relationship with your brand.
Social proof works like magic
Social media is a living breathing metaphor for social proof. This is how it works; You see a catchy skincare advertisement on social media, you are interested, but first you need to see proof that it actually works as promised. You surf through their previous posts for testimonials and reviews, and voila! you see reviews that will spur you into taking a specific action. It’s that easy. You not only get to see social proofs through pictures, you also see it through the comments left on a post.
And the best part? You can get all these done within minutes. You can show people how your products can help them without writing a 10 page long copy letter. Social proof is a great way to build trust and credibility.
It is also the fastest way to build one. You do not even have to wait to establish long relationships with your target audience. If your social proofs are convincing enough, regardless of how long or short they’ve know you, they will be most likely to take a buying action.
Platforms for social media marketing
There are numerous social media marketing platforms. They are so many that it is almost impossible to keep up with all of them.
Below are the best 10 social media platforms that you can use to sell your digital products or services.
If you’re a business owner or you’re looking for a way to make money through social media marketing, then Facebook is the first digital space you should be considering. More than 2.8 million people use that social media app monthly. Yes! You heard that right. This means that your chances of finding a high concentration of your target audience is greatly increased.
It has an easy to use interface and you can connect to people in minutes using Facebook. This is a digital space that is bustling with traffic and activity so make sure to take advantage of it.
Everybody is on Instagram. Okay…maybe not everyone, but a large chunk of adults are. If you are a sucker for entertainment and engaging information, then Instagram undoubtedly is the place to be. Instagram has a fun, light air to it that makes marketing to people so much easier.
When you are following a brand on Instagram and you consistently see their posts, it’s very easy to feel like you have established a personal relationship with them. When they eventually try to sell to you, it’s going to look a lot less invasive than when you’re being sold to on an advert or a salesmanship. You can easily go through the social media account that is targeting you and through the reviews and engagements you can decide on the best action to take.
LinkedIn is another way to boost your brand and sell your products and services. Unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn has a more formal and serious air to it.
LinkedIn already has a specific kind of audience. They are the working class, the elites, the business moguls and the new graduates looking for opportunities.
This means that when marketing on linkedin you have to tailor your messages to suit those kind of people.
Hello trends! Twitter is knows as the trend setter of all social media platform. It’s the easiest place to get information and the easiest place to share information too.
Marketing on Twitter is a great place to build leads and grow your company. If your contents are information packed and engaging enough, they will get multiple re-shares which will lead to more brand visibility. If you’re lucky enough, you can even have a post go viral. When using twitter for marketing your business and brands, you have the option of promoting your whole account or just specific tweets in your account.
Tiktok
Tiktok is a whole new world on its own. Honestly, there is so much more love, understanding and inspirations on the social media app compared to other social media apps. People go on their Tiktok to escape from reality for a few seconds.
Marketing on Tiktok will involve a different strategy. It is not as widely used for marketing as its counterpart Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but there is no reason it shouldn’t be.
The best thing about Tiktok however is that it is easier to go viral while using it than on other platforms. If you create a really nice engaging content, optimize hashtags and infuse trending sounds on a Tiktok video, you can generate a significant amount of brand attention which you can eventually turn into sales.
Quora
This social media platform is good for generating backlinks to your website and establishing credibility and authenticity. It is a good brand reputation builder. You can be established as an industry expert on Quora by providing relevant and helpful tips and answers to Quora’s most popular questions. You can market your brand and website on Quora by including links on your content each time you provide relevant information to the Quora community.
Pinterest is a go-to platform for people who want to discover new ideas or are looking for inspiration for specific things. This could range from clothes, food, shoes and every other thing you can think of. This means that it naturally will have a lot of traffic and if used properly to link back to your website can generate a lot of traffic.
Building a social media presence on interest can help you establish yourself as a trusted authority in your specific niche. You can also build a community of people who trust and believe in your brand especially if you have helped them with a particular problem.
WhatsApp is known for its personalized communication process but you can also promote your brand through Whatsapp. It does not have the wider reach that other social media platforms have but it makes up for that in trust.
Your audience on WhatsApp are most likely to trust you because of the personal user interface WhatsApp naturally creates. You can include your company’s brand name, link and advertise your products on your WhatsApp status through WhatsApp.
YouTube
This is easily one of the best ways to gain exposure for your brand. Because it is in a video format, you also have a better chance at engaging your audience and getting them to take action.
You can provide helpful information on your YouTube channel then sell to your audience at the end. If your video looks great, well put together and speaks to their specific needs, people are most likely to take action. You can start off with a simple request like a CTA for a subscription, then build it up with up other services and products.
Telegram
This is a channel you can use to to grow your outreach, boost sales and help customers explore services. As at 2020, the Telegram community had a growing number of 400 users. It’s a great way to build a consumer list and it is also an easier way to resell to your target audience. This is a platform a lot of people have not yet leveraged on but it can offer numerous benefits to your business.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing For Your Business
Brand Visibility
Brand visibility and awareness is a vital part of social media marketing. You want your brands to be recognizable by people. When your brand is known, consumers are most likely to purchase and take action because they are familiar with it.
Creating brand visibility and awareness using social media marketing is one of the sole and effective ways to promote your brand. It can be a great way to draw your audience’s attention even when they are not thinking of you.
Increases sales
Social media features a higher lead close rate than any other digital marketing platform.
It is easier to connect with your target audience and identify with them because they’re in a space that offers then entertainment and information. Once you’ve identified them as potential customers, you can convert them into leads. our commoner can convert them unit customers at the end.
Tracks your success
It is impossible to truly know if your social media marketing efforts are fruitful without a good analytics set up. It’s vital that you track your progress so that you can easily identify what works for you and what doesn’t early on and look for better alternatives.
A good analytics tool to use is the google analytics tools. It can help you measure successful media efforts and marketing campaigns.
Easily turns Target Audience Into Leads
Monitoring social conversations and trends in social media is an important process for promoting of your brands as well as your products and services.
Social media makes it easy to listen to your customers wants and needs. You are able to engage with them on a more personal note which means that you are able to serve your customers better because you can identify some of their problems and offer solutions to it.
You will be able to easily identify their problems and then create programs that will help them tackle those problems. A great social media tool to use for this is Twitter .
Inexpensive
Social media marketing is easily one of the cheapest methods of promoting a brand. Unlike other platforms, signing up and registering your brands on social media platform usually does not cost much. In some cases it does not cost a thing.
You can even begin to attract your target audience by paying absolutely no money. Your return on investment will be much more promising than any other platform ROI. Even when using paid social media to promote your brand you can always start with the small purchase then test run to see what works before you can splurge on it.
Increases Conversion Rate
Social media when used right will give your brand higher visibility because of its easy to share features and reposts. When your brand has more visibility, it will experience higher conversion rate and higher conversion rate promises higher lead generation.
You can use everything on social media from blogposts to videos to infographic and even audios to drive traffic back to your website which will also help build the authority for your website.
Satisfies customers better
Social media has a natural touch of personalization which makes fulfilling customers needs a lot better and easier. People can easily reach out to your brand, tag your brand and keep tabs with your business. It makes the buying experience for prospective customers seamless.
Other digital platforms make use of a lot of automated response which is greatly reduced when using social media. Customers feel seen and a happy customer translates into business growth and promotion.
Establishes Loyalty For Your Brand
The major way to establish a customer base that always comes back to your brand is if your customers are loyal. It can be hard to establish customer loyalty at first because there are a lot of products and services that look just like yours so how do you stand out from the rest and establish a unique rcongnizable presence in your customers mind?
You should know that it will take some time to build a customer’s loyalty, but, when you engage with customers on a consistent and long term basis, you make them feel special and that can naturally build their loyalty towards your brand. This can be achieved easily through frequent social media interactions like posting interactive Q and A sessions, commenting on posts, providing daily helpful content etc.
Builds Authority
Customer satisfaction and brand loyalty both contribute to your company’s authority, but it all comes down to communication. When customers see your company posting on social media, especially when they see you replying to customers and posting original and relevant content, they believe your brand to be credible.
You can build authority around the product or services your company is offering. And also build authority in search engines when you increase the traffic on your website.
10 Best Social Media Marketing Tool
1. Instagram Analytics
This is an incredibly helpful social media tool for Instagram. You can monitor your accounts performance and use the metrics shown to create new marketing plan. Instagram analytics also help you save money when using Instagram ads because you will be able to use already existing data provided by the instagram analytics tool to set up your Advertising plan for your brand.
2. Socedo
Socedo automatically discovers the people on social media who fit your buyer persona. They do this by looking at real-time social behavior then categorizing individuals based on that data.
Once you have your audience, you can divide followers into multiple segments. That way, you can make sure only the relevant segments get your content and promotions.
3. LastPass
Last pass is that extra security that you need for your social media account. It protects your social media password In an encrypted database. It’s so easy to forget your social media passwords especially with so many social media platforms available that all require passwords.This tool can be an incredibly helpful tool in storing all these information about your passwords.
4. Twitter Analytics
If you have a Twitter account that you use to promote your business then Twitter analytics should not be a surprise to you. This is how you measure the performance of your Tweets.
Using Twitter Analytics, You can monitor and gauge your page’s performance. You are able to know and see what your engagement performance is like and which days you should optimize more.
5. Facebook Analytics
Just like Twitter, Facebook also features free analytics tools. It can let you in on how customers are interacting with your posts. It shows you who interacted with it and where. It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that Facebook feature more analytics tools than Twitter since it has a larger population and market.
6. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a great tool for discovering new and popular content on the web. You can easily plug in a topic or a selection of keywords. You can also receive top trending keywords. You can use buzzsumo to research ideas fro your content marketing campaign for your social media.
7. Canva
This list would not be complete without this multi-tasking social media tool. What can’t you create with the Canva app? From amazing images to videos there are numerous options to jazz up your content creation on your social media platform.
8. Buffer
This is the perfect tool for scheduling posts ahead of time. You can schedule posts ahead on any social media platform that you like. You can choose the days and time for your posts to show up on your platform.
This is a great and helpful tool for shortening your URL so that it can be compatible with all social media networks and so that people can also share it on their respective social media pages. This is good for customers to remember and share your link.
10. Social Insider
Social insider is an all encompassing analytics social media tool that can be used to track your Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter performance and over all metric. The best part of this tool is that it can be used for more than one social media.
You can measure where you rank against the top competitors in the industry which will help you in optimizing your content and improving your social media marketing plans.
10 best tips for social media marketing
- Always set a specific goal before you begin marketing.
- Do a thorough research on your target audience.
- Determine the best social media platform that will work well for your brand. Eg. Courses and online workshops work better on Twitter platforms.
- A social media content calendar is a must.
- Your content should always be emotive
- Make use of the social media tools to measure and track your performance.
- Post at specific times that your audience are already aware of.
- Maximize the use of hashtags
- Always create great and helpful content.
- Infuse recent trends in your content.
