Social media marketing has forever changed the way brands choose to advertise their products. Various social platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, have their own unique way of boosting your business and helping reach your marketing goals.
There are various social media marketing strategies available to business owners, but one way to achieve immediate results is through paid advertising on these platforms.
Social media promotions can also be used at little to no cost for branding purposes. Whether business owners use social media management services, or share videos, images, and other related content online themselves, the brand is made known to a larger audience as a result.
What Are the Benefits Of Social Media Marketing?
Before getting into all the benefits that social media marketing can bring, and what can help your content stand out, let’s briefly cover what do we specifically mean when referring to when talking about SMM.
Most social media platforms offer businesses a chance to purchase ad space, or to show content to a specific demographic of users. While paid social media marketing may require a slightly different tone than organic content posted to your pages and accounts, we’ll be covering the benefits and practices that apply to both free and paid social media marketing.
Now, let’s break down the key benefits that social media marketing can bring to your website.
- Increased awareness. Your brand will be recognized by a broader audience. You can achieve this by interacting with and offering interesting content to people who visit your social media pages.
- More traffic. With every platform used to reach out to consumers, you can increase the quantity and the quality of your traffic if you target posts and ads correctly.
- Improved rankings. Many argue that social media has no effect on SEO and organic traffic. On the other hand, many believe that strong social signals can greatly enhance search engine ranking positions, as you’re sending interested users to your site.
- A chance to increase conversions. Every time a user reacts to content on your social media pages, be it an image, video or story, brand visibility is improved. Interacting with consumers for an extended period increases a company’s credibility and trust. This also makes people more likely to recommend the brand to others.
- Better customer care. When a client gets a response from a real person instead of an automated reply, they feel valued. Responding to online comments improves overall customer care and interaction experience.
- More savings. Social media marketing is a cost-effective advertising strategy if done correctly. Creating an account on platforms is free and promoting your brand is inexpensive if you can effectively use the multitude of tools – like what Facebook offers – that help you target the relevant audience.
What is Social Media Optimization?
Also known as SMO, this process helps draw attention to your website or blog when using social media marketing. In a nutshell, SMO is a set of practices that helps make sure your marketing content is effective and your pages and profiles are used to their full potential.
How Does SMO work?
When it comes to SMM and SMO, the ultimate goal of a brand is to get noticed on social media. In most cases, more eyeballs will bring in more business. The more people follow your content, the more chances of them ultimately buying whatever it is you’re offering.
Successful social media optimization requires focusing on certain key aspects and techniques. Here we’ll break down what you should pay extra attention to:
1] Social Customer Relation Management
SMO is used to acquire new leads, but it can also be used to improve customer relations. In the past, companies focused on collecting customer data and following up manually with these customers via phone or email. This ongoing contact would then be used to encourage these leads to convert.
Customer engagement through social media management strategies allows companies to follow up with each lead one by one, or by creating engaging social media posts that add value to their followers’ feed on an ongoing basis.
Consumers are interested in supporting businesses they can relate to, so brands that reach out to their clients on the regular and highlight their values and mission have a lot to gain. This is a perfect goal to reach when using social media marketing.
When using this approach, marketing takes on a more targeted approach, and the customers are given a chance to give direct feedback (in the form of comments, likes, and shares).
Companies are also in a better position to address people’s questions or complaints through social media.
2] Strong Visuals
The right photo or image can do wonders for a promotional post. Facebook and Instagram marketing has proven this time and time again.
When choosing what you will use to market a product, ask yourself the following questions.
- What are my values?
- And What is my story?
- What is my product all about?
The best engagement comes from posts that do a good job of pairing relevant and attractive images along with concise text snippets that convey important information in as few symbols as possible.
3] Mobile-Friendly Content
More than ever before, people are surfing the Internet on the go. Make sure your content is well suited for smartphone and tablet screens.
One way of doing this is by using social media plugins and buttons on your website to easily direct people, and by making sure your images on social media are within a 1:1 ratio and don’t require the user to flip their phone horizontally when viewing.
4] Search Engine Optimization
Social media marketing goes hand in hand with search engine optimization – SEO. People who visit your website organically (coming through search engine result pages) can be retargeted on social media. For example, Pixel tracking on Facebook makes it possible for you to target your organic visitors directly via Facebook ads.
5] Consistent Content
To keep followers and subscribers engaged and interested, post content regularly. Depending on the platform used, this can range anywhere between once a week to ten times a month. Content calendars can be useful when planning what you will upload as well as publishing habits. Scheduled posting can also be leveraged to save time and effort.
6] Competitor Analysis and Research
Being a step ahead in the game means knowing what your competitors are up to. You can learn from them by studying what has proven to be successful in their social media posts. What do they publish? When? How often? What are the differences in the way they approach a similar target audience?
7] Engagement
Be active on social media and grow your online presence. Answer questions and comments from users. Address their concerns. Make sure to let your brand’s personality, voice and tone shine while doing so.
You can also make the most of the features on social platforms to keep consumers interested. Instagram and Facebook stories, for instance, are great for time-sensitive marketing promotions and announcements. Since they only last 24 hours, consumers feel more inclined to take immediate action.
Conclusion
Effective use of social media marketing can be the line that separates a good marketing campaign from a great one. We hope that this guide helped you get a better understand of the benefits that come from using social media in your marketing arsenal. When planning your next marketing campaign remember these key points.
- Create memorable interactions with visitors.
- Use strong visuals to make your content easier to spot.
- Make sure your content is mobile-friendly.
- Consider SEO benefits, and set up easy cross-platform content sharing.
- Be consistent with your post scheduling.
- Check what other companies are doing that you’re not.
- Engage with your audience.
These social media optimization tactics work for both paid and organic posts. We hope you put them to good use. Good luck!
