Definition Of Social Media Marketing Strategy
Social networks are a fantastic opportunity for brands to be in direct contact with and engage with their customers and potential customers. And the way to get to them is by Definition Of A Social Media Marketing Strategy. Have you already heard about this concept and have not been clear about what it is? We hope that this article will help by providing an overview and explain the principles involved, and give you some ideas for further study and research.
What Are The Social Media Marketing Strategy Options?
Social Media Marketing Strategy is the strategy applied to marketing using social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, Webtalk etc. That is, they are the marketing actions that a company or brand carries out to present their products or services on the above mentioned social networks and to inform and engage with customers and potential customers.
Definition Of Social Media Marketing Strategy is simple in concept. The complication is how best to carry it out in order to achieve the best outcomes for your business. Because, it is not about presenting your products as you would in the form of a catalogue, but to carry out an Attraction Marketing or Inbound Marketing, and to get engagement from your audience, which will result in enhanced Brand Awareness, and better engagement resulting in likes, comments and shares on your content, and ultimately more conversions, either Opt-Ins or Sales.
Reasons For Your Business To Use A Social Media Marketing Strategy.
In a world where the market is increasingly competitive, a good Social Media Marketing strategy can encourage consumers to choose to buy your product or service before the competition, creating a differentiating character of your business over your competitors. In addition, Social Media Marketing can create a very positive impact on the public with respect to the company that promotes it, thus strengthening the perceived value of the brand.
A Social Media Marketing campaign can reach a large number of people without having to depend on a large budget. For example, simply make a small investment as a volunteer in a cause or to give up your facilities to host a local social event can efficiently inform and enhance the public perception of your business. Also, this type of campaign helps to create constant content to be able to send it and plan it through your social media networks.
Neuromarketing studies have shown that purchasing decisions are largely irrational and are very much influenced by emotions and feelings, therefore implementing an effective Social Media Marketing strategy can help to activate that emotional component of the client.
Support for social causes helps clients to see that behind the brand there are people, people who, like them, care about society and seek to improve it day by day, humanizing and raising awareness among the population that there is still a lot of work to be done, fostering solidarity, alignment of social values, equality, sustainability charity and respect.
Now we can understand that social media marketing is not a strategy to apply only for companies of a social nature, but are techniques that have a double positive effect on all types of businesses: on the one hand they help to build the brand image and to differentiate it from the competition, while on the other hand, they help to promote a better world.
How To Implement A Social Media Marketing Strategy In Your Business?
The first thing to understand is that social networks are a place to establish conversations.
We already know that the Internet has changed the way we sell. Invasive ads no longer work, such as those made in Traditional Marketing. However, we cannot do without the publicity that is carried out in social networks, since they are a fundamental part of our communication strategy so that it improves our reach so that it reaches the maximum number of people.
From here, we can understand that there are two basic aspects on which to base the implementation of a Social Media Marketing strategy:
- 1. Content Marketing.
- 2. Social Ads (advertising).
It should also be noted that there are 2 distinct approaches to generating traffic from Social Media engagement.
The first approach involves Free Traffic, which is called Organic. This type of Social Media engagement involves a lot of time spent posting on your chosen Social Media network, so that incrementally, day by day, you engage with more followers or visitors, building engagement as well as Authority of your site. This is the sort of approach taken in blogging, and posting such blogs on Social Media platforms.
The second approach involves the use of Paid Traffic from advertising, such as Solo Ads.
We suggest that you check out our post here on Rethinking Social Media from Paul O´Mahoney, who is one of the leading gurus on use of Social Media for marketing.
Content Marketing As Part Of Social Media Marketing Strategy
Currently, we are looking for the customer to come to us. And we do it with a Social Media Marketing Plan based on content marketing. And what does this mean? Once we have designed the strategy to get closer to our target audience, we will endeavour to create useful content for them. That is information which helps to solve their problems or relieve their pain points.
Digital content can be a post of a blog, an image, a video, infographic and, in general, any type of publication that we make on social networks.
What Is The Purpose Of Content Marketing?
What we seek through content marketing, basically, is:
- To generate engagement with our visitors (comments, likes and shares) because this means that we have managed to mobilize them emotionally with our information.
- To Improve the reputation of our brand, because people will see that we offer value in terms of products or services and people can relate to us when they see our brand in publications that attempt to answer questions or satisfy needs.
- Differentiate ourselves from the competition, as a consequence of the above. Surely you know that there are still many companies in your sector that do not have any Social Media Marketing strategy. All companies need to have a strategy for Social Media Marketing as part of their overall Marketing Strategy, and therefore they need to allocate time and monetary budget according to their priorities.
Characteristics Of Useful Content
Within any Social Media Marketing Strategy, we should create a calendar, so that we can plan and organise what content will be produced and when within our overall Marketing Strategy. In no case strategy is improvised and neither is it in social networks. In the content calendar, we detail which topic to publish, in what social network to do it, how often, etc. This way we will know what is the best moment for each type of useful content. Keep in mind the useful content must meet one of these functions, at least.
1. Be Educational:
It is one of the most successful among users. You can create guides or manuals so that they learn to do something. These are the typical posts whose title starts with “how” or “x forms”, or review of x.
2. Be Entertaining:
If, in addition to educating, you can entertain, all the better. Videos or comic strips are attractive content for users and usually generate quite a lot of engagement. It will help you in your branding, and make sure visitors will return for more entertainment.
3. Be Inspiring:
This type of content reminds, in some way, the advice. For example, “5 ways to create effective meetings”. As you can see, all of them are useful because they answer questions, satisfy needs and differentiate you from the competition (your style is unique when presenting these contents).
Social Media Ads As Part Of Definition Of Social Media Marketing Strategy
We are sorry to tell you that social networks are not free. Yes, it is that you open profiles in them, of course. And that you use them at the user level. But if what you want is to help your business grow, which is the goal of Social Marketing, then you have to invest:
- In human resources: professionalizing the people who will manage them (Community Manager, Social Media Manager, SEO Manager, etc.).
- In economic resources: to pay the previous professional profiles and for advertising on social networks.
Why Do Social Ads? What Are the Characteristics of Each Social Platform?
The number of people who see your posts on social networks depends on the algorithm of each of them, ie Facebook´s algorithm is different from that of Pinterest, as is each Social Media platform. It’s like the formula of Coca-Cola, which nobody knows exactly what it is.
Of all the Social Media platforms, Facebook is the one which knows the most about its customers and has the most customers. This means that Facebook is a massively potential asset for advertising your business. The number of Facebook users is expected to grow from currently more than 2.5bn to 4bn in the next 3-4 years.
There are approximately 2bn active advertisers on Facebook, and this is because Facebook enables you to very precisely target the potential customers or audience which you have in mind.
This is because Facebook has a massive amount of information about their users, such as their age, sex, location, interests, income and lots of monitored data about which sites they may visit and their personal preferences. Such information is enormously useful to advertisers.
When visitors like comment and share posts, there is the potential for your Facebook posts and ads to go Viral and you can derive enormous benefit for your business in this event.
If you are looking for excellent Facebook training, then some of the best available is from LURN Academy by Anik Singal, check out our review of Lurn Nation here.
Pinterest is a search engine as well as a Social Media Platform. It is very good if your business uses graphics and images, including videos.
Your posts (which are called Pins) can be shared and copied by other Pinterest users and reposted on other boards.
Using and sharing High-Quality images in your posts are the best way to achieve success in Pinterest.
Pinterest does not have as much information about their users as Facebook does, but like Facebook, it is a rapidly growing and popular social media platform.
If you want to know more about Pinterest marketing then check out our post about Angie Gensler here. Angie is the Pinterest guru!
Twitter is good for engaging cold traffic (people who are not familiar with your brand, not necessarily interested in your offer. Tweets are not highly targeted, such as with Facebook Ads or posts.
Twitter has less information about their users, and their audiences are less engaged.
Youtube
Youtube is the second largest search engine. It is extremely powerful for advertising in any niche, especially those where you demonstrate something, such as in ¨How To …¨ videos.
Youtube videos are more difficult to set up, requiring certain basic equipment in order to do so and a level of expertise in order to make a video of a certain duration. Generally, the longer the video, the more likely it is to get engagement from visitors. A minimum duration should be 5 minutes, and usually, more than 10-minute videos are more successful and popular.
Here is a video from Roope which demonstrates how effective Youtube videos can be in building your brand. Roope learned his methods from Wealthy Affiliate.
LinkedIn is very good for Business To Business Marketing (B2B). Because it has fewer overall users, it is not as powerful as Facebook. Advertising in LinkedIn can be expensive.
Content Distribution Networks
An example of such a network could be Yahoo. Advertising can reach a huge number of people, but it is not at all targeted, and there is not much control, and there is very limited Analytics available.
General Background
What we do know is that it is below 10% of your followers, that is, out of every 100 followers, maybe only 7-8 will read your post. Surprised? The owners of these Social Media platforms also have a business which they are trying to maintain as profitable as possible. It is clear that they seek companies to invest in advertising, rather than providing free views for visitors.
Think that Social Media Marketing is an investment that you must include in your general marketing budget for your company. Our recommendation is that you do not invest in any social network just because you think there are many users in it or because it is fashionable. You need to analyse which Social Media platform best suits your business.
Choose well which is the most appropriate Social Media platform for your business. Think about your customers and give them a budget. There are several goals you can achieve with them. The great advantage they have is that they have a very good segmentation and, if you adjust the programming correctly, your ad will see just those people of your target.
In short, Social Media Ads are a good investment because they help you to achieve very good results. As you can see, behind Social Media Marketing there are many concepts and a lot of strategies. If you want to know it thoroughly you will need to spend some time to study it thoroughly and develop advanced strategies to identify what will work best for your business.
Conclusion And Recommendation – Definition Of Social Media Marketing Strategy
From the above information, you can appreciate the complexity of writing a concise Definition Of Social Media Marketing Strategy and especially how to make it effective for your business. The question is where best to start? It is best to follow a structured plan of training, and there is plenty available on the market, some of which we mentioned such as LURN Academy or Pinterest training from Angie Gensler. We think the best Free training is available from Wealthy Affiliate.
If you need more information and want to study Social Media Marketing in more depth, then you should click Set Up A Free account With Wealthy Affiliate to Set Up A Free account With Wealthy Affiliate for FREE Social Media Training On Wealthy Affiliate training on the subject from Wealthy Affiliate.
Wealthy Affiliate enables you to get basic training in Social Media Marketing in Blogging and Affiliate Marketing and even allows you to set up and host 2 websites, all free, while you explore what is involved, and see if it suits you.
There is only one upsell with Wealthy Affiliate, which is that you can choose to subscribe monthly to WA, which will enable you to set up and host 25 websites within the membership subscription which is only $49 per month, at which time all the available training on all subjects becomes accessible to you.
Here are the benefits which you get as a paid member of Wealthy Affiliate, as opposed to a Free member.
There is a lot of training available via paid courses from numerous different sources, some of them costing many thousands of dollars, but we suggest that you start with the FREE TRAINING FROM WEALTHY AFFILIATE.