stmWant to learn how to make money online on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter? Let me introduce you to social media marketing. I will advise you not to skip any part of this guide. Ensure you read everything here to the end.
Let’s begin.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Simply put, social media marketing denotes or implies the use of the several social media platforms and social networks to shop an organization or company’s products and services.
In social media marketing, companies are provided with ways to involve themselves with already existing customers and reach fresh customers which allows them to promote and eventually market their desired culture and products.
Over the years, social media has transformed and altered the operational nature of things in the society which includes ways we connect with one another.
Some of these social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram kicked off and businesses also took notice. Companies began to use these several platforms to further their interests through social media marketing and leverage on the sites ability to change consumers’ behavior.
Social media websites enables and gives marketers the ability to engage a large range of strategies and approaches to promote content and have people take part with it. Most of them permit users to provide detailed geographical, demographic, and personal information, which aids vendors to mold their communicational contents to what is most probable to relate with customers.
Also Read:
- How To Make Money With CPA Marketing – A Beginner’s Guide
- Effective Lead Generation Strategies To Boost Your Sales And Make More Money Online
- A Beginner’s Guide To Email Marketing: Everything You Need To Know
Benefits Of Social Media Marketing To Small Businesses
In years before now, social media has not only shown remarkable and quantum progress but it has also efficaciously diffused the online awareness of all internet users around the globe. Fast forward to today, the social media influence is even more common, and its remarkable trails are not so easy to be ignored in commercial and business models.
Marketing on social platforms has become so important and relevant, that businesses are ever more scheduling and organizing on it to optimally exploit it to their business in a profitable way. In this article are also the list of top benefits of social media marketing for business for all those questioners who are yet to cohere and see its numerous capability.
Here are some of its top benefits to small businesses;
- Increase In Brand Awareness
Complementing the huge amount of data and information, social media has high effective conversion and exceptionally low cost means to increase brand awareness and breed in new customers. It easily creates acquaintance with your business’s online presence and ground covers an inscription on the minds of customers, prospects, and patrons.
A social account permits free registration and demands your time only. Nevertheless, an account ought to be properly developed and well maintained, and you should be dynamic and watchful enough to improve maximum acquaintances.
Brand awareness does not only influence the buying patterns positively but also strengthens the sense of loyalty and shows evidently in customer behaviors.
- Legitimizes Your Brand
Customers usually conduct an online research about a brand they are interested in quite regularly. If the same evidence is made available on social media, it helps to create a solid foundation toward the consumers’ knowledge and familiarity of the organization’s products and services rendered which over time leads to brand legitimization.
- Increases SEO Ranking And Web Traffic
As of 2021, marketers have made claims that a social media presence increase concludes a larger lead traffic to websites.
This is not very surprising, prior to the fact that 73% (and above) of grownups who stay online have a great deal of quality and large time frames on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and may others.
Facebook being on top of the list of all social website, attracts the most significant amount of traffic. More so, it has been conventional that the greater the numbers of media shares you receive, the upper hand you have for rankings in search engines.
- Minimum Costs In Lead Generation
CPL which is customary known as the Cost per Lead. The CPL generation from social media leads to just about a small percentage of the cost per lead via the old traditional means like newspapers, radio, or TV commercials.
Based on analysis, it can save up to 80% of the aggregate lead generation costs, which has a great effect in supporting an increase in the company’s Return of Investment (ROI), not just by cutting cost but also in the aspect of sales increase.
Likewise, the social media networks have the available features of cost but effective paid promotion choices like the popular Facebook Ads and Twitter Ads, which grants permission for any business institution to scale, increase reach, and pump the demand generation. Bearing in mind that lead or traffic generation is principal and also referred as the oxygen of any business process or marketing, performing so at a least cost can only be cost-effective and profitable.
- Boosts Content Marketing
Pointing at more stress on content, big search engines like Google have of late reformed their search engine algorithms. Not neglecting the fact that content marketing surfaces as the most significant digital marketing instrument in the year 2015, as the digital marketing trends poll recorded, this is still an aching area for any seller to propagate the content to concentrated customers in the shortest time frame. Social media has already gone a long way in tackling the issue.
The means of sharing content on your business has become reasonably easier and even faster over numerous social media networks. On the other hand, when sharing valuable content on social platform, care must also be taken to ensure that the social content not only bring into line with your brand alone but also stimulates the customer’s curiosity and responsiveness.
Best Social Media Marketing Strategies And Tools For Beginners
Social media marketing has helped so many companies in recent times to build engaged audience where they already spend time or have frequency of visits. It also creates numerous sources of traffic that brings in customers. Social networks virtually put your business in front of about 3.78 billion people online which is 48% of the world’s population or nearly that population as the case may be.
Having a social media marketing strategy that keeps your engagements focused, along with numerous processes that enable you to do marketing effectively.
This article is a premium guide to stroll you through the methodologies for your own social media strategy, alongside tools which will help you pull it off.
What Is Social Media Strategy?
Social media strategy talks about the overall game plan of a business meant for finding and attracting new customers on social media.
A vibrant and well defined social media strategy should be able to guide your procedures, help you position yourself to stand out and also has the capacity to track successes and failures.
Your business value proposition is what you stand for so, your social strategy should also have a way of revolving around that.
Why Is A Social Media Strategy Important?
Social Media strategies are so important because that is what will keep your business on track while building social presence at the same time.
Some of the benefits of social media marketing include: customer loyalty, better branding, more conversions (in other words called sales probability), customer support is improved and also the web traffic is inclusive.
List Of Social Media Marketing Strategies That Works Very Well
Some of the Social Media Marketing Strategies are highlighted and further discussed below.
- User-Generated Content
- Shots of product Used
- Video Creation
- Livestream
- Influencer Marketing
User Generated Content: This is the process of feeding your targeted audience with valuable and also irresistible offers that will prompt and compel them to buy products and services right away or to nurture them to buy over time.
Shots of Product Used: It is a great idea to have quite a lot of content set-ups to add to your variety social media marketing make up, a tested and proven content format that is put out consistently in front of targeted audience can do well in growing your audience over time. It is practically a less work technique that serves uniquely in the long run.
Video Creation: Taking and Making of videos for your product has become very easy over time with the introduction of smartphones cameras which has made it easy to hit the record button. Up to 60% of businesses use video creation as a marketing strategy and it has produced results and evidences which they comfortably have over their belt.
More so, about 95% of these businesses have opted to continue using this strategy in the coming years.
In the aspect of Video advertising and usage, YouTube has successfully picked up the top spot with 88% usage and then followed by Facebook with a 76% usage by marketers.
Taking videos is not hard as it may sound because you do not need a perfect and all inclusive production studio to craft engaging videos. Simple Video formats like video tours, product updates, the how-to guides, entertainment videos in general make up great content that has the ability to attract followers and also drives them to your website.
In as much as YouTube is king in the video sector, you can also make use of platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram reels, IG stories, Snapchat, Facebook Stories, etc.
Livestream: This Strategy in Social Media Marketing has actually grown from zero to hero in the past years. With its massive growth of about 99% in a single year (2019 to 2020), the Livestream concept has 27% watch time minutes more than on demand videos.
This strategy does not require and fancy production team also as you can start a live broadcast using your smartphone only.
Several Social Media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Telegram have the livestream feature encoded in them.
It is no surprise that this strategy is very effective and the reason is because people like knowing and trusting who they will buy from. Live streaming brings about authenticity and it is also engaging.
Some fun Livestream Ideas include;
- Creating a Q&A session to get clearer understanding of your audience
- Run Flash sales
- Show behind the scenes tactics
- Hos a giveaway
Influencer Marketing: This is one of the strategies most newbies can take advantage of. Since Influencers on Social Media have more audience engagements, you can use leveraging to reach out to influencers that deal with stuff related to your own niche and talk through terms and agreements to use them and grow your own audience over time.
Social Media Tools For Beginners In Digital Marketing
Social Media Marketing tools are very essential and important to make your social Media work a whole lot easier most especially in the long run.
Moral social media marketing can transmogrify the achievement of your brand and business in general. But you should bear in mind that doing so without the necessary resources for specific, dominant tools that bring into line to your organization’s objectives to play, you can’t craft or share valued content to bring in massive growth, or even entice and attract new audiences or drive important engagement.
In this article, we have reduced the stress of rallying around looking for tools to use for your social media marketing and have gone extra mile to categorize them to your own benefit and maximum understanding. The 6 categories are as follows;
Social Media Scheduling tools: There are numerous and different social media scheduling tools types which readily available on the market for almost everything which even includes; making up posts, content time frame, queuing and consolidating.
But all of these scheduling tolls have the common goal of helping the advertiser to maximize and save time.
All Marketers should know that going to and fro between complexes drains considerable amount of time. If that time is multiplied across all of the social possessions an individual or company manage, and the work day might be a difficult and tense conflict counter to content scheduling.
Time and energy is very well reclaimed by using these kinds of tools.
Social Media Analytics tools: This is a very important tool when it comes to online marketing in general because this helps in keeping track and also evaluating data such as Total clicks, impressions, total reach and many more.
It is so said that if your data is off, your business is off. Analytic tool give cleaner and also a better bigger picture for your business.
Some of the Uses of analytic tools are listed below.
- Keep track of performance for all your social media networks and profiles in one place.
- To observe and monitor the effectiveness of your past and active social campaigns by cataloging and recording them independently.
- Shows messages re-sound the most to your targeted audience and direct your social media publication strategies.
- Spy on your competitors to see how their engagement and progression measures up to your own.
Social Media Automation tools: Differential to what people think, the automation tools doesn’t really replace what the human do but it only automate procedures and steps that the human has ordered it to perform and thereby saving time and energy without any form of disruption in the user experience.
Some of the things that automation tool do is that;
- They create rules to spontaneously flag or store incoming social mails and chats to clear your inbox.
- Increases reply rate by screening and suggesting replies centered on your distinctive social behavior.
- They also assess how operative and the efficacy of your social marketing with automated response requests.
Other tools include,
- Social Media Listening tools
- Social Media Engagement tools
- Social Media Monitoring tools
How To Create A Social Media Marketing Plan For Facebook, Instagram And Twitter
For Facebook
Facebook is still regarded as one of the most used online social platform by adults and even teenagers. And a good number are using it every day, which remains useful in providing brands and businesses with a chance for maximum visibility with good Facebook strategy. Normally, the toughest part is simply getting started. In creating a media plan for Facebook, these are what you need to put in place;
- Set Facebook goals
- Know your Facebook Audience
- Engage proactively with your audience
- Schedule your Facebook content
- Determine your Facebook ads strategy
- Encourage employee advocacy
- Always track and analyze your result
For Instagram
Instagram as a top social media platform in recent time have the prospect to play a vital role in your brand’s overall marketing plan.
However, as this is business, you cannot just make a content post, sit back, and be expecting a success at the end of the day. The creation of an Instagram marketing strategy is essential in smashing your goals. As it happens, it involves every step from finding your target audience, to charting out a clear content strategy for the social media platform.
To create a marketing plan for Instagram, you will have to follow these steps carefully:
- Set Instagram goals
- Find your audience on Instagram
- Optimize your profile or page
- Find your voice and tone
- Develop a strong content strategy
- Figure out your hash tag strategy
- Set up a style guide for your content
- Set a consistent posting schedule
- Always track your data and analytics
For Twitter
Over the past couple of years, Twitter marketing has proven to be a complicated channel for even the most experienced social marketers.
With an average of over 321 million active users monthly, it is relatable to see why companies keep opting for Twitter after all of this time. But fast forward to 2021, it is not just sufficient to make several Tweets about the hottest trending topics frequently but it now requires a very systematic and clever approach to succeed at it in terms of building your business for long term. The following must be done right.
- Audit your twitter account
- Find your twitter voice
- Use Twitter hash tags and trends
- Utilize twitter ads
- Find out when to tweet
- Schedule tweets ahead of time
- Engage with your followers
- Set measurable twitter goals
- Incorporate twitter into your overall social media content strategy
- Additional Twitter marketing resources
Best Free and Paid Online Social Media Marketing Courses and Certifications
There are a number of free and paid online social media marketing courses and certifications, but we will be discussing on the best to opt for.
Let’s start with the free ones
Best Free Courses
- Hubspot Academy Social Media Marketing Certification
This Marketing certification course is offered by Hubspot Academy. The Hubspot Academy’s certification course on social Media Marketing ranks as the first on our list of the best free courses offered online.
The curriculum can be completed in 5 hours only which includes nine lessons, 40 videos, and 34 quizzes. The course is fashioned to help businesses attract new customer list by building a social media strategy that is effective.
Other free online courses on social media marketing include:
- Social media marketing course offered by eMarketing institute
- Social Media marketing specialization offered by Northwestern University through courser
- Strategic Social media Marketing offered by Boston University through edx
- Social Media advertising offered by University of Colorado Boulder through Coursera
Top Paid Courses
There are also a number of paid social media marketing courses and certifications. Below is a list of them:
- Reliablesoft Academy Social Media Marketing Course
This online course on social media marketing is offered by Reliablesoft Academy. This course is suitable for beginners and even intermediate learners in social media marketing.
The most important thing about this course is the terminologies it uses that can be understood by beginners.
The cost for this online course is $600 but is currently on a discount of 80% which brings down the course to $119. The duration of the Social Media marketing course by Reliablesoft Academy is one week.
Other paid Social media marketing course are as follows;
- Social Media marketing specialization offered by Coursera
- Social Marketing Training offered by Hootsuite
- Social Media Marketing Mastery offered by Udemy
- Social Media Marketing offered by Online Marketing Institute
Best Social Media Marketing Companies
There are various social Media Marketing companies and we have done well to bring an exclusive list for you.
- LYFE marketing : The best option for small businesses
- Disruptive Advertising: Digital marketing Agency
- Joseph Studios: Advanced Organic Marketing
- Firebelly Marketing: Social Media to make brands more likable
- Neuelane: Unignorable Advertising
- ATTN Agency: Performance and growth Marketing
Social Media Marketing Jobs (The Most Sought After)
There are so many opportunities to work online in the social media space. Here are some of the job opportunities;
- Social Media manager
- Social Media influencer
- Brand/Digital content Executive
- Visual Designer
- Growth Associate
- Growth executive
- Content Specialist
- Communication Manager
- Senior content writer, etc.
How To Do Social Media Marketing Today
In today’s world, learning has become very accessible via online platforms that teaches and gives information for free and some might cost little amount of money to enroll and get started.
Social Media Marketing can be learned through readily available platforms like Youtube and the likes.
Conclusion
In this article, several things have been discussed in regard to Social Media Marketing. With this information provided at your fingertips, you can confidently go and start implementing or to jump start an already existing social media Marketing. Finally, consistency and hard work is key to seeing results on social media.
stm