Importance of Social Media Marketing for Business
Content Writer
⏱ Reading Time: 9 minutes
In today’s world, the importance of social media marketing has never been greater. Considering the world is going digital, it makes sense that social media is becoming the go-to place for brands and businesses. Social media and its related tools offer a variety of organic and advertising options when communicating with a customer. The possibilities and advantages are numerous, as social media marketing is about more than just launching your content for the world to see.
There are many aspects to marketing on social media, both positive and negative. This article explores both sides, offering a peek at the best way to plan for social and help you determine the perfect type of social media platform for your business.
Read Omnichannel Guide for Digitally Advanced Brands
Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing
Social media can be used for businesses of all sizes and it is more affordable than any other marketing tool in history. You can use it for a variety of things, notably:
- Promote the name of your brand and business
- Tell customers about your goods and services
- Find out what customers think about your business
- Attract new customers
- Build stronger relationships with existing customers
Using social media has many advantages, but nothing is perfect. Marketing through social media has some notable risks. These include several ones, notably:
- Wasted time and money for little or no tangible return
- The rapid spread of the wrong kind of information about your business
- Incorrect information accidentally posted by you or negative reviews posted by others
- Not following privacy legislation and the laws regarding spam and copyright
That’s why it is very important to learn how to use social media effectively to prevent these things from happening. The first step is creating a social media account while avoiding pitfalls like buying followers or using non-relevant media. As a result, using social media properly increases customer loyalty and humanizes your company. When combined with similar practices, they make for an impressive and effective way to navigate social media.
Increased traffic and SEO rankings
A few days ago Google rolled out an update on its algorithm which crumbled again SEO experts who need to learn the best way to increase page rankings. Well, what’s better than using social media platforms to increase traffic and making it more relevant to Google. Therefore, social media platforms are a great way to build your backlinks and anchor links.
Planning Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
In order to maximize performance, you need to plan before you act. The same thing goes for posting on social media. Developing a content strategy takes certain preparation, as you must set your goals and figure out the right way to accomplish them.
Let’s walk through 6 easy steps to planning an content strategy.
Setting your goals
You should take time to decide what is going to be your business goal, where you are headed and how can social media help you get there. Doesn’t matter if it’s a content promotion or attracting new customers, remember to set S.M.A.R.T goals. This goal strategy lets you focus on what’s really relevant, offering a way to make better use of your time. Once you have written your goals down, it is time to find your audience.
Picture 1. All your goals should be SMART
Targeting your audience
In order for your posts to be relevant, you must first target your audience. This is done by understanding the market and your users alike, their interests and ambitions. It also makes it easier to find them, as engaging with niche-specific communities will give you the chance to interact with them directly. Speaking from an advertising viewpoint, the most popular social media platforms allow you to target specific groups or people with specific interests. Investigating them lets you find the relevant ones to your business. Remember, every idea is based on keywords. Finding the right keywords is a step closer to your audience.
Investigating the competition
Analyzing your competition’s approach and strategies can provide you with a good sense of what is expected in your industry or niche. In addition, it provides you with some insights into how to improve your business strategy. Using social analytics tools can help you identify key interest points and even find content gaps between them in real time.
Building content
Social is a valuable promotional tool, and as such it relies heavily on content. That’s why the backbone of any good social media plan are relevant articles. Therefore, your content should be aligned with your other resources, such as a blog or a similar product. Evaluate what your users want, and provide them with context and valuable insights. Everything you post should be scheduled, honest and valuable to the reader. In short, something that they’ll willingly share.
Engaging your audience
Social media channels are essentially small networks. This means their main purpose is to serve as a space to converse, discuss topics and share content. Engage your audience and bring them closer to your brand, build your own little community. The little groups of people that relate to and associate with your brand are your most valued customers. Hence, it’s important to keep them engaged. Starting discussions and offering insights is a great way of doing just that. More valuable the engagement, the greater benefits for your brand will be.
Measuring performance
It’s important to monitor your social media performance using analytics, keeping a watchful eye in order to make sure your content is well received. Having a bird’s-eye view over all your social media activity will help you put things into perspective, making it easy to keep track of your KPIs. Similary, knowing just how well posts are performing gives you the chance to improve or reevaluate your strategy. There’s no shame in not getting things right the first time, which is why optimization is key to every good performing social media plan.
What Is the Best Social Media Platform for Your Business?
Different types of social media are used for different marketing needs, depending on your niche or brand identity. Identify the perks and benefits of each one in order to get a sense which one is best for your business.
Picking the right platform for your brand is equally as important as having a good social media strategy, as it defines your approach to customers. Every single social platform offers a unique set of values and approach, as some are better suited for certain types of businesses than others.
Facebook is a really popular platform for advertising. It allows conversations with your customers, to post photos and videos and to promote special offers. Overall, Facebook offers a great customer experience. If you want to read more about Facebook, check this blog post we wrote: Using Facebook Messenger for Customer Service.
In contrast, Twitter values short and relevant messages and organic interactions. Therefore, you can use Twitter to build your brand visibility and exposure. YouTube puts all their value on original and visual content, often unforgiving of commercials and sales pitches.
Similarly, Instagram and Pinterest are also based on the visual, emphasizing aesthetically pleasing and informative content. Instagram grew and became one of the best places for a visual advertisement for your business.
Also, check this great article from Mobile Monkey on How to Leverage Instagram for Business in 2020.
Which one is the best?
It very much depends on the type of your business, so there is no simple answer to this question. Check out the graph below which shows the frequency of using some of the social media platforms and instant messengers. Let numbers to help your decision.
Picture 2. Frequency of social media usage
Top 5 Social Media Marketing Tools You Need in 2019
So far it is quite known that social media marketing can bring success to your brand. But sometimes it is hard to maintain and manage all your account and campaigns at the same time. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of social media marketing tools that will help you grow your brand online.
Picture 3. Best tools for social media marketing
Falcon io
Falcon.io is a platform for every social media marketer and for customer experience. It is a SaaS-based platform for social media listening, publishing, engaging, measuring, and community management.
Some of the features include customer targeting, building a strong connection with your audience, managing channels, analytics. Moreover, it helps you to create paid and organic posts and to merge your social data with CRM.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is the best-known social media marketing tool on the market. It can help you to manage all of your social media accounts from a single dashboard. It a perfect solution as most companies have a lot of social media account and don’t have time to manage all those accounts. So, with this tool, you can easily find, schedule, and manage your social media content easily.
Some of the key features are monitoring, organizing content, schedule updates, secures passwords and profiles. Then, maintaining a strong social media presence and you are able to see all your comments and mentions in one place.
Oktopost
Oktopost is a social media management platform for B2B enterprises. It helps them to manage, monitor, and measure their social media activities. It stands among all of the other social media marketing tools as it’s dedicated to B2B marketing.
Main feature and advantage of this platform is the fact that is designed for B2B enterprises only. Some other features are detailed analytics and reports, keyword monitoring and the fact that Oktopost helps you to post better content and engage your audience in a more effective way.
Social metrics pro
Social Metrics Pro is a WordPress social plugin and a powerful social media marketing tool that allows you to manage all your social media accounts from one place. It helps you to your content effectively in order to reach out to a broader audience.
Some of the features include social media monitoring, analytics, tracking how your content is shared on social media sites. Also, how many times that content is shared across other networks and you can choose how many posts you want to see at a time.
Tailwind
Tailwind is a social media marketing tool designed for Instagram and Pinterest. With this tool you can easily schedule posts, discover content, monitor conversations and analyze results using Tailwind.
It helps you reach more of the right people by using the right hashtags and plus it saves your time. Then, you can measure what is working and what is not. And it is affordable for small businesses. Members of Tailwind said they generated 4x more engagement on their content while using this tool.
Conclusion
If your goal is to be in touch with your users, social media is the place you want to be. There’s plenty of pros for going social, as well as a few cons. Comparing them involves making for a calculated decision, as social media needs to be run efficiently and with goals in mind. Planning your strategy is a vital part of social media marketing, as is choosing the right platform!
Picking the right social platform to promote your business can be tricky, as not all hold the same values or have the same approach. Moreover, it’s even harder to keep track of multiple social channels and all the user messages incoming. That’s why there’s a variety of help desk tools that can help you manage all your messages in one place, allowing a simple management of all your social channels. In conclusion, social media marketing is a gateway to the digital world that provides a great way to connect with your customers.
