Even during one of the darkest years in the history of mankind, the ill-fated 2020, one global phenomenon helped billions from sinking into depression – social media. This is one of the most powerful tools available to people in our times.
Every business these days has to have an effectual social media presence in order to be effectively heard and successfully marketed. Therefore, social media marketing and by extension, the many trends that keep cropping up in the realm are pivotal to businesses.
What is Social Media Marketing and Why is it Important?
Successfully harnessing the potential of social media to promote your business is called social media marketing. It is important because a giant share of the global population is online and actively engaged in these apps. Hence, making good use of them should be a priority for any business out there.
Impact of Social Media On Digital Marketing
Since digital marketing is all about bridging the gap between the product and consumer, social media works wonders in helping them do so. This is because taking the help of platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, you can directly engage with your audience.
How SEO and Social Media are Related?
While the link isn’t all that clear, it can help you in ranking number one if you do go through the task of figuring it out. While social media directly doesn’t affect SEO rankings, it does influence certain factors that do so.
Since social media platforms are where mass sharing happens, the urls are important for SEO rankings. If your content is shared often, then it becomes more probably that the people will exchange links to it. This is where the two become interconnected. This was but a simple example.
Social Media Marketing in 10 Easy Steps
Follow the steps given below to reap the many benefits of social media marketing:
Step 1: Decide which Social Media Platform Works for Your Brand
The major platforms – Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn – all cater to different demographics or social groups. This is why you should not take this decision lightly. If you don’t pick the right platform, you might miss out on reaching your target audience.
Having said that, try to be active on as many social media platforms as possible, besides the main one. You should never let any opportunity, where you can get new leads for your business, go.
Step 2: Set Social Media Goals
Social media marketing is all about creating awareness about your brand. Setting goals will help you in keeping track of your progress as well as ensure that you stay motivated.
Having specific goals is better than having vague goals like, “I want to increase our Instagram followers” or “I should work on our Facebook business page”.
Examples of what these goals could look like are:
Get the twitter follower count to 1000 by the end of the week.
At least 10 5-star ratings on Google by the end of the month.
Step 3: Enhance Your Social Media Profiles
First impressions are important. This is not a concept lost on anybody. You have to keep a good profile for your audience so that it gives them an incentive to visit it again. Social media marketing focuses a lot on appearances as it is important to remain consistent with your profiles on different platforms.
Besides this, you have to constantly keep up with the latest trends in the social space and make content which is unique but relatable at the same time. Some things to keep in mind:
Step 4: Be Consistent
People appreciate consistency. It makes them know that you believe in your work and are willing to do what it takes to put your word across. Create schedules and stick to them without compromising on quality.
Step 5: Know Your Audience
You create content based on the preferences of your audience and since content is what drives social media, along with people obviously, you need to know your audience.
In social media marketing, not only is it important to churn out good content, but you should also know when to post it and where.
Step 6: Be Discoverable in a Search
Make sure there is as much consistency as possible among your different social media handles. It makes you easily discoverable. This means that your handle on Instagram and Twitter as similar as the platform will allow since many times the handles are already taken.
Step 7: Create and Schedule a Social Media Content Plan
As we said earlier, make sure that you create a schedule and stick to it. Not only is it better for your audience, but also makes it much easier for you to keep track of your social media progress.
You can create a calendar and segregate your work, add the times when it needs to be published and avoid making management issues. This also gives you some time to work on any new ideas that you might have.
Step 8: Choose Quality Over Quantity
Even though consistency is key, don’t do it at the cost of your content’s quality. Everyday people are creating new content and going viral. But the ones who stick are those who keep coming up with new and quality content. This is what social media marketing is about.
Step 9: Use Analytics to Improve Your Performance
Arguably, even more than creating content, it is what you do with that content later that matters. Each time you put something out into the social space, ensure that you learn something. What works with the audience, what works and what areas you can work on. Tools such as Google Analytics and Instagram Insights, among others, can help you in this.
Step 10: Follow the Influencers in your Niche
This will help you in learning what type of content works best with your target audience. You can also collaborate with the influencers to widen your reach and create awareness about your brand.
The sheer power that social media wields, and the monumental change it can bring if handled efficiently and creatively, is unprecedented. By extension, social media marketing can really change things for the better for your business if used smartly. The above steps will guide you to some degree in doing so. If you still have any doubts, feel free to reach out to us. Digital Ready is always happy to help.
