Social media marketing is the use of social platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive traffic to your website. This marketing strategy consists of publishing great content on your social profiles. It also involves listening to and engaging your followers, as well as analyzing your results and running social media advertisements. In this blog post, we will be going over what social media marketing is and what it entails.
Major Social Platforms:
- YouTube
- Snapchat
Social media began as a way to publish content and generate traffic. But, social media has grown beyond that, and is now more than a place to broadcast your content. Social media is used in so many different ways.
Cores of Social Media Marketing
There are five core elements of the social media marketing process.
1. Strategy
The first important element of social media marketing is to take a step back and create a social media strategy. Begin with your goals. What can social media help you with? Some businesses use social media to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate engagement.
Determine what social media platforms you want to focus on. When choosing the platforms you are going to use, think of your audience and where they would more be engaged. For example, if you are trying to connect with teenagers, it would be best to post on TikTok or Instagram. But, if you are looking to connect more to middle aged users, it would be better to post to Facebook.
Next, determine what type of content you want to share. What type of content will attract your target audience the best? Would it be best to use photo or video? Should it be educational or entertaining? It is possible to use a few different types of content. Some posts could be photo ads, some could be video. You could post one that is entertaining, and some could be educational or informational. Your strategy could end there, or it could move further into a schedule, which typically comes into the planning prior to publishing process.
2. Planning and Publishing
The planning process begins with your social media strategy. Once you create your strategy, there is not much more planning that you must do. Know what type of advertisements to create, whether it be photo or video ads, entertaining or informational, etc. You must also know what platforms you will be posting on, what your schedule will be, and what your goals are. Once you finish planning and scheduling, you can begin posting and publishing your content.
There is not much that comes with publishing your content. Depending on the amount of planning you do, publishing is more of a copy and past from your strategy.
3. Listening and Engagement
As your business and social media following grow, conversations about your brand will also increase. With your brand growing and more people interacting, there will be more conversations regarding your company. With that being said, it is important to monitor social media posts regarding your brand.
This is because many of the posts will be done without you knowing. Monitoring these posts will allow you to engage with your consumers. If you see a positive conversation regarding your business, you can interact and surprise your consumers. But, if the conversation is negative, you can interact and offer some support, which will increase your credibility.
4. Advertising and Analytics
Advertising is important because it will get the name of your brand around, and it could increase the engagement with your brand even more. When your funds grow through this process, advertising will become easier. Finally, analytics is a is the last thing to pay attention to with this process. Analyzing your progress will allow you to know whether your marketing strategy is working or not.
Conclusion
Social media marketing is something that could help your brand tremendously. Although it is an important process, it is a simple one if you take your time. Keep the elements of social media marketing in mind as well.
If you have any questions,