What is Social Media Marketing
The birth of the World Wide Web (Internet) in 1969 marked the beginning of a new era of communication. Almost three decades after the Internet was invented the first social media site six degrees.com was invented, paving a way for other social media sites to follow through. Throughout the years, different social media sites rise and fall. The reasons that some sites failed to survive taught others to abstain from these reasons to survive. Social media evolved for 25 years creating a network that we all know and spend most of our time today.
Since the launch of Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media sites in 2004 they attracted a ton of attention and traffic towards them. Businesses viewed these traffics and created business profiles on these social media sites. Following this step marketing strategies were drafted and put into action. Today businesses invest more than 90% of their marketing time and budget on social media marketing.
According to the statics from backlinko 4.48 billion people making up 60.99% of the total world, population use social media platforms. On average a person engages in 6.6 various social media platforms and spends 2 hours and 24 minutes a day on social media platforms. These statistics show why it is essential to use social media marketing to reach the maximum possible number of people.
Social media marketing is misunderstood as a marketing tool only used for businesses and corporates, but the truth is that it is also used for NGOs and governmental offices. You can use social media marketing for anything it doesn’t matter if your product or service is created for profit or non-profit.
Now equipped with a brief history of social media, social media marketing, and the statistics of social media users the next thing to know about is how to use social media marketing for your business or company. We will discuss steps to excel in social media marketing.
Steps to succeed in social media marketing
Step 1 Creating a well-organized plan
A plan is essential before carrying out any other steps in your social media engagement. The plan you create initially will guide you throughout your growth in social media presence. You will have a clear view of where you are right now and where you want to be in a certain time frame, making your social media journey a walk in the park. Before you start creating your plan you should take these measures.
A. Collect knowledge about various social media platforms.
Collecting knowledge about various platforms will help you easily navigate your way in those platforms. It will also show you what kind of users are most active on these platforms guiding you in what type of content you should engage with (consider researching on demographical statistics of the platform’s users).
B. Select social media platform suitable for your business or company
You don’t need to create an account on every social media platform you could think of to market your business. Use the demographic information you collected, your budget, and your manpower assigned for social media marketing to select a social media presence for your business or company. If you are a well-established business or company, you could use more than three platforms, but if you are a small business or a start-up, we advise you to use from one to three platforms and proceed in increasing them as you grow.
c. Select equipment you need for your social media presence
Depending on the social media platform you need different equipment to produce content. On a basic scale, you will need a computer, A phone with a decent camera and internet sources (Broadband and WIFI). Creating content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok that uses pictures and low-budget production videos. When considering joining platforms such as YouTube and other premium-level platforms your production equipment will grow in number. List out the equipment you need based on your chosen platform to create content and your budget. It is possible to create high-quality content with low-budget equipment. We advise you to dig deeper into this matter.
After you collect information based on the above measures you will finalize your plan with a time frame on where you want your social media presence reaches after a certain period. These might include the total number of followers you get, the number of sales made because of your social media marketing, and so on.
Step 2 Start using social media for your business or company
Before starting to proceed with this step you have selected the platform you want to use and you have created a business or company profile on the platform you want to use. This step is the step you will create content for your business or company.
a. Thinking visually
When posting on your social media platforms you must include at least one picture related to your posts. In the psychology of human being pictures tend to capture our attention more than raw text contents. Whenever you post include real photographs or animated pictures to your post to receive higher engagements from the users.
b. Create quality content.
When creating content, you should note that quality is more important than quantity. You should invest your energy in creating quality text, Images, and audio-visual content for your audience. Create attractive content. If you don’t have experience in this area you should consider hiring building a team or hiring companies that could create quality content for your business or company.
c. Post using schedule
Studies show that posting with a regular schedule creates a higher reachability rate. Create a daily, weekly, and monthly posting schedule. Use any paid or free software and applications to schedule and track your posts such as buffer.
d. Be active and responsive
Businesses and companies fail to actively engage with their social media community. This will create a decline in the trust that users have toward you. You should provide your social media community and social media users with possible ways to reach you with their questions and recommendation to your business or community. Provide phone numbers, email addresses, and social media inbox that you reply to.
Step 3 Use analytics to track your social media viewers
Using analytics to track your social media platform users is help full to know more about people interested in your content. It will help you track if you are going according to the plan you created in step 1 you can clearly see the demographic research you did and the real demographic result of your viewer’s match. Knowing this will tell you if you need to revise your plan in reaching your targeted audience or if you must revise your content that matches your real viewers. Buffer also has analytics features you can use.
These steps are effective in creating effective social media marketing for your business or company. These steps evolved from the 25 years history of social media. If you take any big businesses, influencers, or companies that have succeeded in social media marketing they use these exact steps at their level. If you feel intimidated about these steps make sure to contact us.