Social Media Marketing
Social media networks have become extremely popular over the last decade, and many businesses are now looking to make the most out of these large audiences with SMM (social media marketing). SMM refers to the process of gaining traffic, and quite often attention, by engaging online using various social media networks. It can also used to share a business message and influence the behaviour of potential customers, perhaps improving sales.
Similarly to email marketing, social media marketing can be seen as another avenue to reach out to new audiences, and current popular SMM portals include YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, while there are many more to choose from.
Regular activity is a must on social media networks especially if you want to build relationships with customers and gain loyal ‘fans’ or ‘followers’. It can be rather refreshing from the customer’s perspective to be able to communicate with a brand and get an insight the personality of a business, and that’s essentially what social media marketing can do; it can bring you closer to a business.
Every social media portal has its own unique environment, and its own set of benefits. Facebook, for instance, benefits from an extremely large user base, Twitter is ideal for joining in with conversations that are happening all around the world, and LinkedIn is ideal for those seeking a professional user base, possibly B2B conversions.
It’s important to always be aware of the benefits and the disadvantages that come with certain social media networks and you have to consider whether your target audience is using the same network, otherwise you may find yourself wasting time and not seeing anything different in terms of enquiries or sales.
An ideal way to get possible customers to your website is by sending out snippets of content from your site in the form of a post, and then providing a link to your site in the post, potentially seeing them click it to be redirected to your chosen landing page. Website traffic that comes from your social media channels tends to be rather targeted, because they may already be subscribed to your social media channel, and they’re more likely to be aware of what your business is about and possibly already interested in your products and services.
It’s fair to say that social media marketing is not for every type of business. As mentioned previously, it requires constant activity so it will use up a great deal of time, and this is why many people opt to use social media marketing specialists. To truly succeed using social media marketing you must aim to do the following:
- Grab your audience’s attention.
- Participate in the social media community and share your voice.
- Maintain a consistent message on a social media platform.
- Post engaging and targeted content regularly.