Social media marketing (SMM) is one of the newest digital marketing strategies to surface in the last decade. It has since joined the ranks of well-known and trusted strategies like search engine optimization, content marketing, and email marketing. The beauty of Social Media Marketing is that it offers something unique that cannot be duplicated with an alternative strategy. It is similar to Search Engine Optimization Marketing (SEO) in this regard. Much like SEO, this makes it a mandatory investment for aspiring business owners.
Another great quality of Social media marketing is that it perfectly complements ongoing marketing techniques. You don’t choose between SEO and SMM. You have them both and they both benefit one another. Business owners and marketing experts have found a number of ways to boost their search ranking using social media despite the fact that there are no social signals that are considered ranking metrics.
The major link between the two comes from the fact that many people use social media to discover stories and news. They may not be searching questions like “how do I trim a tree” or “where is a locksmith near me”, but they are still finding a lot of new content nonetheless. This content is often shared by the people and companies whom they follow.
The sharing, “liking”, and discovery of new content is a major part of what fuels Social media marketing. Not only does it provide a general boost to visibility and traffic, but it can encourage link building with other website owners who enjoy the content. The other side of Social media marketing involves engaging with customers in a way that seemed impossible or unlikely in the past.
As you may have guessed by now, Social media marketing can be extremely complex and involves many “moving parts” though it may not appear so at first. Attempting to manage your own Social media marketing campaign is a very daunting task. However, it may be entirely necessary if your business is just launching and you don’t have the resources to invest in a professional digital marketing firm. The following guide contains a few simple steps for getting your social media marketing campaign off the ground.
1. Establishing Goals
This is the first step when organizing any sort of marketing campaign. Social media marketing is capable of many great things, but that doesn’t mean you should try to do all of them. This is particularly important when you’re managing the campaign yourself. Fortune 500 companies may be able to utilize social media to its fullest extent, but they spend an extremely large amount of money to do so.
It’s best to start by setting simple and obtainable goals. Do you want your Social media marketing campaign to generate leads? Are you going to use social primarily as a tool for interaction with your audience? Do you want to use social media as a source of fuel for your content and SEO techniques? Choose a goal and then you can begin to outline a plan for achieving that goal. In the future, you can add more complexity to the goal and even set additional goals entirely.
2. Understand Your Social Media Options
It is easy to immediately think of Facebook when you hear the world social media. But that doesn’t mean Facebook should be your primary focus. You need to find out what social media platform your target audience is primarily using. This also has a lot to do with your type of website and your market. For example, when it comes to ecommerce, Pinterest is almost always the best social media service to target.
You can use competitor research if you are struggling to identify the best social media platform. Simply head over to a competitor website and see what social media links they have on their pages. What platform are they most active on? On what platform do they have the largest following and the greatest number of interactions? These are the social media platform that you should target first.
Try to limit your focus to only two or three social media platforms at first. You can and should expand as your business grows. However, when managing a campaign alone you can easily become overwhelmed with only a single social media outlet. More than three is likely going to hinder the quality of your posts and interactions.
3. Create the Best Profile Possible
Creating a social media profile is one of the most difficult tasks associated with Social media marketing. It may seem easy at first. You just upload a picture and say a few words about yourself. In reality, what should go on your profile is going to be determined by the nature of the social media platform and your target audience. A LinkedIn profile, a Twitter profile, and a YouTube profile will all look very different. They will each highlight specific aspects of you or your brand.
Again, this is a task that is benefited by competitor research. Find your biggest competitors using the same social media platforms and look at how they present themselves. Of course, keep in mind, your brand image is more important than competitor imitation. It’s a fine line that you’ll need to find and walk carefully.
4. Begin to Connect and Share
Now you’re down to the heart of the work. In the beginning, you can split your Social media marketing tasks into three categories. First, you need to find influencers and competitors so that you can follow them. Second, you need to share high-quality posts and content from your own website as well as content from others. Third, you need to attract followers and interact with them in a variety of ways. Each of these tasks can be very difficult and time-consuming.
Perhaps the easiest and most enjoyable is finding and sharing content. This is something that most of us do on our personal social media profiles. We find posts that we like and we share it. When it comes to Social media marketing, these posts need to also be relevant and reflect the same ideals as your brand.
5. Build and Invest
The best move you can ever make for your Social media marketing campaign is investing in a professional marketing service. Spend your time building your social media presence and use that to build your brand. In time, be prepared to hand the reigns over to a digital marketing firm. That will free you up to focus on more important business aspects and will greatly improve the speed of growth for your company.