Social Media Marketing: The Ultimate Guide

Social media marketing means creating content for various social media platforms to promote a product or service, build a community with a targeted audience, and drive traffic to your business. With the evolving new trends and popularity of various social media platforms, social media marketing has reached new heights of importance for businesses of all sizes.

Different types of social media platforms and their marketing strategies:

The benefits of social media marketing is different for businesses based on the platform used for product promotion since each platform follows different marketing strategies.

1. Facebook, launched in 2004, is the most established and largest social media platform with 1.9 billion daily active users worldwide. It is very impactful for B2C businesses and offers both advanced advertising tools as well as organic opportunities. This platform is used mostly by an even spread of Generation X and Millennials and is best for creating brand awareness and advertising.

2. TikTok rose to fame in the year 2020 mainly because of its short-form video content. It has an active monthly user count of 1 billion and is primarily used by Generation Z and Millennials. This platform is most impactful for B2B and B2C businesses and is best for creating short-form creative video content, user-generated content and brand awareness.

3. Instagram, launched in 2010, has taken the world by storm because of its visually compelling content. It has 1 billion active users monthly and is primarily used by Millennials. What makes Instagram different from other social media platforms is its advanced e-commerce tools. This platform is impactful for B2C businesses.

4. Twitter is primarily used by Millennials and has a daily active user count of 211 billion worldwide. This platform focuses on words and earlier had a limit of 140 characters tweets, now it has expanded to include three new tools – Twitter Spaces (audio tool), Twitter Communities (community-building tool) and Twitter Moments (interesting content sharing tool). This platform is impactful for B2B and B2C businesses and is best for public relations, customer service and community building.

5. LinkedIn is perhaps the only platform with a clearly defined audience, comprising working professionals who look to network and seek out new opportunities. It has around 774 million active users worldwide and has a primary mixed audience of baby boomers, Generation X and Millennials. This is an ideal platform for B2B businesses who look to identify decision makers and build an industry-specific community.

6. YouTube is the second most visited website in the world with over 315 million daily active users worldwide with a heavily diversified audience. Marketers believe this is the best platform to build community and very impactful for both B2B and B2C businesses. It is an ideal platform for sharing educational content because it mostly contains long-form videos, how-to videos and is best for creating brand awareness – thus keeping its users engaged for a long time.

7. Snapchat, launched in the year 2011, became popular by the year 2015 and has been since because of it taking the lead in ephemeral content. It enabled its users to share content privately that disappeared in 24 hours. It has over 306 million daily active users worldwide containing an audience of primarily Generation Z. It is most impactful for B2C businesses and great for creating brand awareness and advertising.

8. Pinterest is like a visual storyboard that stores for its users inspiration for everything from fashion to home decor. It has around 444 million monthly active users worldwide with a mixed audience of Millennials, Gen Z, Gen X and baby boomers. It is most impactful for B2C businesses and visual advertising.

9. Clubhouse is one of the recently launched social media platforms in 2020 that has gained prominence because of its unique audio-only and invitation-only. In this platform people can start interesting conversations with followers as well as strangers and build a community. It has 10 million weekly active users worldwide comprising primarily Millennials. Clubhouse is very impactful for B2B and B2C companies and is best for visual advertising and inspiration. 

What are the benefits of social media marketing?

Social media marketing has many benefits that can help any size of business grow. To start with let’s elaborately understand the four most important benefits of social media marketing:

1. Increases brand awareness: If your business does not have a social media presence, you are already missing out on the many benefits that social media has to offer. Since much of the public nowadays are on social media, you are at a loss of potential to reach thousands and even millions of your audience. Social media marketing helps to boost brand awareness by driving up engagement which includes things like comments, likes, shares, reposts and saves. By increasing your brand awareness, social media directs traffic to your site. This can be done by providing direct links to your website in your profile, bio and posts.

2. Generate leads and boost conversions: Using social media to promote or share your products or services helps in improving your lead generation, boost conversions, and increase sales because you’re directly approaching people who have followed your account and are willing to engage with your content. To generate leads you can create contests, include links to your website and offers, host live videos, implement a social media marketing campaign, sell your products through your social profiles.

3. Foster relationships with your customers: Connecting and engaging with your social media followers enables you to build lasting relationships between them and your business. This can be done through frequent interactions with them on your posts, responding to their questions or comments, and providing them with any help they need. You can also question your customers about the experience of your product or service, their sore points, or create giveaways that can help you build trust and show them that you value their input and support.

4. Learn from your competitors: Keeping a tab on your competitors is easy with social media in reference to their social media tactics, their products that they’re promoting, the campaigns they are implementing, and their way of interactions with their followers. With the help of social media you can measure what is and isn’t working for your competition, and help you decide what you should or shouldn’t change in terms of your company’s approach. By reviewing the social accounts of your competitors you can make sure that your marketing stands out and is unique to your brand.

Apart from the above mentioned point, you must also know several social media tools that will help you to leverage your social media presence. One such tool is the use of hashtags in various social media platforms. We do use it either knowingly or unknowingly, but using it for your product promotion in the right manner can help your marketing strategy to reach unexplored heights. To more about the use of hashtags and how to use them for your social media marketing you can visit: 

https://www.medigit.in/how-to-master-use-of-hashtag-social-media-marketing/

What are social media marketing agencies?

Social media have emerged as the biggest revolutions after smartphones. Using social media to promote your products and services in order to reach your target audience is called social media marketing. You might not always be an expert on social media and hence social media marketing agencies help to make your social media handling better. They help to make your brand social. A social media marketing agency helps you to determine the right platform for your business to go social. By handling your company’s social media presence, these agencies help to ensure that your products and services are targeting and reaching the right kind of audience and directing traffic to your website. They help your business to create a community and write your brand’s success story. Social networks are now an integral part of every branding and marketing strategy, with great potential to exploit visibility – to distribute your message to a large audience, virality – to multiply your actions with a limited investment, interactivity – with the possibility of exchanging and retaining your community, and proximity – to strengthen your customer relationship and conquer your prospects easily. To learn more about social media services and the role of social media marketing agencies in India you can visit: https://www.medigit.in/social-media-marketing-services/

How to measure social media metrics?

Social media metrics are data related to the success of your posts and your impact on your audience and customers on various platforms. These metrics may include data about your level of engagement, reach, followers, impressions, video views, profile visits, mentions, tags, reposts, and shares.

There are a variety of ways to measure your social media metrics. It can be done by using the various analytical tools built into the platforms you use. Some examples are:

1. Twitter Analytics

2. Facebook Analytics

3. Instagram Insights