Social media marketing can help raise your audience and convert interested people into potential customers in a meaningful way. Relevant content designed for your audience is key to increasing the presence of your brand within digital media.
Social media are used daily by many people, who use them to collaborate, inform themselves, share opinions and experiences, or expand and consolidate their networks of relationships. Daily, thousands of people worldwide contribute to collaborative projects such as Wikipedia, which in September 2014, only in its editions in Spanish and English, added almost 6 million articles (Wikipedia, 2014). And millions of users consult the contents resulting from this immense collaborative work, which at the same time made Wikipedia the sixth most visited site on the Internet (Alexa, 2014). Similarly, thousands of users play on networks and virtual worlds with other people; post, share or view comments on Twitter and the blogosphere; and they use content communities, such as YouTube, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest, and many more to publish, share or consult videos, opinions, photos, personal projects … And how to ignore the millions of people who have become regular users of social networking sites (Facebook, Tuenti, LinkedIn, etc.). In them, they find the appropriate platforms to share personal profiles, meet other people and chat.
Stating that social media marketing initiatives are a must is a no-brainer. But how do you take advantage of the enormous opportunities these media present to bond with consumers and contribute to your marketing goals? Answering that question is, on the other hand, another matter. Many social media marketing efforts are inconsistent (Wilson et al., 2011) so that, instead of responding to a well-designed and adequately integrated digital marketing strategy, they are disaggregated or guided by the sole premise that the better visibility and more connections (Piskorski, 2011); that is why they are not effective.
The social media marketing strategy is not just about designing a corporate profile on social media and launching tweets, posts, photos, videos, or pins. Although these are important aspects, there are also other elements to take into account, such as, for example, knowledge of the characteristics, habits, and preferences of users and potential clients who use social media or the deployment of programs that adequately articulate content—generated by users with those of the brand itself (RodrÃguez-Ardura, 2014). In short, there is a need to design a social media marketing strategy that is well integrated into marketing plans and evaluate its results quickly and continuously.
It is vital to understand the functioning of social networks and your audience’s response in each of them, analyzing, evaluating, and executing the content; that is why we share some reasons why marketing is vital on your social networks.
Importance of social media marketing
Brand building
We must attract and satisfy our audience predictably and consistently as a brand to generate empathy with our consumers. One of the best ways to do this is by offering content that enriches them both intellectually and emotionally to build a strong and positive brand in the minds of our audience.
Web traffic
We are talking about the number of visitors who access our website and add value to our digital portal. Using a good social media strategy is an excellent way to attract visitors to our site from well-known platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and many more.
Positioning (SEO)
More traffic to our site means a better reputation when search engines decide to do positioning. Likewise, the activity of our social profiles adds value to our brand in the digital world. A site with higher external references has a better page rank for search engines.
Return on investment (ROI)
Social networks are powerful tools, and marketing on them represents a much lower cost than other digital and traditional media. In addition to being cheaper, the segmentation it offers is specific and accurate, which allows us to reach our target market more quickly, making our brand more relevant and the purchase intention more significant.
Put, social media marketing is key to growing your brand today. If your brand does not have web positioning strategies yet, now is the time to start.
When developing a social media plan, you must set the company’s objectives in the digital framework. These must be specific, measurable, realistic, and have a date to fulfill them and the people responsible for executing them.
You have to design a communication plan. Choosing which social networks are suitable for each brand and not being on a social platform, but publishing aspects that interest your target and creating a plan with different phases to reach the objectives.
It is also essential to have plans to deal with potential online reputation crises. Nobody is out of the danger of having a crisis, and it is necessary to have protocols for action in situations of misunderstandings or a complaint from an annoying client; better safe than sorry.
The social media marketing plan must have some flexibility. In social networks, interactions with customers are essential, they are always unpredictable, and you have to be prepared for various nuances in the roadmaps.
Different social marketing techniques
The Smartphone is increasingly being used, which is gaining ground on the desktop computer. In addition, video is rising like foam as a marketing strategy. In this sense, the good idea is to create your video or television channel for your brand.
Video added to types of advertising such as programmatic results in less invasive advertising for customers. Native ads are necessary, with the content of value for consumers. If we use invasive advertising, we must bear in mind that there are blockers. The ideal is to create quality videos and content in advertising so that they avoid being blocked and can also be shared by customers.
E-commerce is also growing more and more, and social networks are incorporating purchase buttons. Facebook, for example, has recently included a Marketplace. If the user can access the purchase from the social platform, the process is more direct.
Another current topic in social marketing is that it is becoming easier to get r data on the target audience we want to reach. We can use micro-segmentation by carrying out campaigns for very chosen audiences, which will allow us to reach our potential users effectively.
In blogs, as in social networks, and especially in video networks, influencers who contribute virality to content and enhance the brand image have become a trend in recent times.
Delving into social marketing
For the expert in the field, social marketing is the application of commercial marketing techniques for the analysis, planning, execution, and evaluation of social programs. These programs are designed to influence the voluntary behavior of the audience to improve their well-being and that of society as a whole.
theses defend that social marketing is the application of commercial marketing techniques for the analysis, planning, execution, and evaluation of programs designed to influence the voluntary behavior of the target audience to improve their well-being and that of their society.
In social media marketing, the process is continuous, and the core is the recipient. Audiences are always part of a process that must begin with research to study the target audience’s needs, wants, and perceptions. It has an essential component of change in attitudes, thoughts, and especially in deeds. Today, social marketing has incorporated the techniques of social media to further its objectives.
