Social Media Marketing (SMM) is an integral part of digital marketing. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are used by marketers to drive traffic, distribute content and provide a customer experience. According to Social Media Examiner, 92% of marketers have increased their exposure through social media and 80% had positive results in terms traffic.
This blog is for you if you have your own business page and want to improve returns from social media marketing. Social media marketing includes all the activities done online to market your product or service. SMM can lead to more following, increased traffic to your website and customer relationship building.
Whether you are considering hiring a digital marketing agency or buying SMM software to manage on your own, following is the information you must know to choose the best SMM service for your small business:
- Have a Documented Strategy
Has your marketing agency developed a written documented Social Media Marketing Strategy? Not having a formalized plan will only lead to ineffective posting on social media platforms. Here is what you can do to document a formal strategy:
1. Know your audience Think of the profile of followers you want to generate on social media. Quality of traffic is as important as quantity. Develop buyer personas and document the needs of your target audience.
2. Develop content to address those needs. Content creation must fit into the broad content plan that you have developed.
3. Make a content calendar to plan when you will share your content. This will ensure consistency in your posting.
4. Also share interesting content by other players in your industry. This could be industry reports, studies and news. Post polls to engage users.
- Use Social Media Marketing Tools
There are many tools that allow you to manage all your social media accounts at one place. Platforms like HooteSuite, SproutSocial and Buffer are well known. Using these tools will allow you to schedule posts, track user engagement and monitor your growth on social media.
According to eMarketer, 60% of small business owners say they are not able to track ROI from their social media activities. Tools like Kissmetrics allow you to measure the ROI for each platform and track traffic and conversions coming from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. It also tracks multiple site visits to give the long lifecycle return from a visitor.
- SMM must be tailored to your business
The goals of each small business will be different on social media. Define your ultimate goal clearly. Do you want to drive social media traffic to your site or just want to increase brand awareness in the audience?
As a small business you may also have some budget constraints. Here’s the good news. You do not need a huge budget to market on social media. High level of targeting allows you to reach your relevant audience and convert them.
- Visual Content
According to Buffer, visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media. Many of the social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are visual platforms. For this reason, any SMM service that you choose must have experience in producing infographics, images and videos for each channel.
- Paid Marketing
All social media platforms have paid marketing tools that make your posts and ads visible to target audience. In fact, major social media networks are focusing on paid channels to monetize their platforms.
It has become difficult for business pages on Facebook to be visible without running an ad campaign. Instagram has introduced carousel ads and ‘shop now’ buttons to its ads.
As per above graph 92% of marketing professionals are using Facebook to advertise. You can start on Facebook with a small budget. The platform is sure to give you returns by micro targeting your audience based on age, location, interests and much more.
Although social media is only one part of digital marketing, it is by far emerging as the biggest and most influential part of it. According to Hubspot’s marketing statistics, more than half of marketers who’ve been using social media for at least two years report it helped them improve sales.
SMM failed for the others because succeeding at social media requires keeping up to date with the latest algorithm changes and new features. You can take help of a digital marketing expert who will take care of all the above points mentioned.
